Canal awarded Berlin City grant

The Canal School was one of eight schools in Maine that was awarded a Berlin City Auto Group “Drive For Education” grant recently.

The school was awarded $3,500 to use for new technology equipment. The grant application, co-authored by Vickie Hebert, Canal principal, and Susan Brown, school librarian, said demands for technology is ever increasing in lesson planning and implementation throughout the school and access to laptops in the building is many times hard to come by.

In December, Hebert, and Brown along with students Elizabeth Cole and Phin Nutting, attended a check presentation ceremony. The students and Brown had created a video to add creativity for the grant application.

The school thanked the grant review committee members, Berlin City Toyota on Riverside Drive and all the employees of Berlin City Auto Group for making the grant program possible and for choosing Canal School as a recipient.

Berlin City Auto Group established the “Drive For Education” program to make an impact in local neighborhoods where their employees work and live. Nineteen schools in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont were awarded grants up to $3,500.

Community

blood drive

Westbrook Tuffy Football is sponsoring a Westbrook community blood drive 1-5 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 20, at Westbrook Community Center, 426 Bridge St.

For an appointment, call the American Red Cross at 1-800 RED CROSS. Walk-ins are welcome.

Portables taken down at

community center

The city demolished two of the four portable classrooms outside the Fred C. Wescott community center building Wednesday morning, according to Maria Dorn, Westbrook’s director of community services.

“They were pretty dilapidated and dangerous to have around kids,” she said.

The four structures, which were used as classrooms when the community center still served as a the Wescott Junior High School, remained on the property after the school closed in 2010. The initial plan, Dorn said, was to sell the buildings, but with costs approaching $35,000 just to move them, finding buyers has been tough.

“We’d take $10 for them,” she said. “Nobody wanted them.”

The buildings have fallen into disrepair, with at least one of them open to the sky above, Dorn said. Two of the more structurally sound buildings will remain, she said, including the building that straddles the paved driveway that connects the center’s parking lot to the Congin School next door. If nothing else, Dorn said, it acts as a traffic control device for now, but she expects that someday, unless a new owner makes an offer, the other two portables will have to be demolished, too.

Westbrook woman graduates

‘Emerge Maine’

Amanda Pike of Westbrook is one of 18 women graduating from an intensive six-month training program that aims to increase the number of Maine women serving in state and local offices.

Each year, Emerge Maine selects Maine women from all ages and backgrounds to complete the comprehensive training program designed to inspire, educate and prepare democratic women for public office.

“The Emerge program has provided me an amazing opportunity and was such an honor to participate in,” Pike said in a prepared statement. “Emerge taught me practical skills, introduced me to exceptional women (and men), and inspired in me a great desire and the confidence to contribute to my community through elected public service.”

Pike is a graduate of McGill University, where she earned her bachelor of arts degree in political science. She has served as the program and membership manager of the Maine International Trade Center, and is employed as vice president of sales and operations at local Maine company, Kids Crooked House.

As part of the 2012 Emerge Maine program, Pike met with national and local experts, as well as many of the state’s top women leaders. The 2012 trainings began in September and culminate on Feb. 4 with the official class graduation