lewiston – In wrapping up its five-year review, the federal Department of Justice and the Lewiston School Department entered a legal agreement in which both sides agree that:

• Lewiston schools will comply with the law and provide equal education to non-English speaking students.

• The department ensures that school libraries are fully accessible to immigrant students.

• More regular classroom teachers who teach any English Language Learner students will receive training on how to teach them.

• When students’ English has improved to where they no longer need to be in the ELL program, the school department will monitor their progress for two years.

• Immigrant students will have access to all programs, such as the gifted and talented.

In signing the agreement Lewiston School Department “shall not be construed as an admission of liability” or that it violated the Equal Education Opportunities Act, the agreement reads.

Department of Justice civil rights lawyers will annually monitor compliance for three years.

What the agreement “says is ‘continue doing what you’re doing’ with a couple of suggestions they made,” said Lewiston School Superintendent Leon Levesque.

Those suggestions are being worked on, said Levesque and ELL Director Susan Martin.

For instance, even though they’re learning English, some ELL students are in gifted and talented programs. At Lewiston High, two boys were in basic math at the beginning of the year, but by the end of the year they were in advanced placement statistics. That the students were good in math and teachers recognized it despite the language barrier is “reassuring that our system works,” Martin said.

Lewiston built its ELL program by “trial by error,” Levesque said.

There was little help from the Maine Department of Education. Lewiston received guidance from Portland schools, which already had immigrant students.

Levesque said he considers the agreement with the Department of Justice “a peer review,” and that his department now has standards to measure its ELL program that it didn’t have before.