Good news comes in many forms. Like an unexpected greeting card in a cherry-colored envelope, conveying a brightening tidbit, or an invitation for backyard revelry.

Or, it can come in an antiseptic legal brief, penned in icy language, like what the Lewiston School Department recently received. In its inimitable way, the U.S. Department of Justice gave Lewiston high marks for its exploding English Language Learning program, following five years of monitoring.

In 2002, after news of the Somali influx made national headlines, the DOJ started a quiet review of the school system’s programs for students with English as their secondary language. At the time, there were about 225 students. Today, there are 655, out of an overall pupil population of 4,700.

“The DOJ wanted to see progression,” says Superintendent Leon Levesque. What the agency, in enforcing the federal Equal Educational Opportunity Act, also wanted to see was whether the largely Somali ELL student base was receiving the language instruction they are guaranteed under law.

They are. So well, in fact, the DOJ found little the district itself didn’t know about the needs of its ELL program, such as developing an in-house evaluation of its program, and wishing for 100 percent of staff teaching ELL to receive hard-earned ELL certification.

For a school system forced to cobble an ELL program, K-12, without much institutional help (“We had to do it alone,” says Levesque), this review seals Lewiston as an effective, and underrated, school system.

The quality of any system is unknown until it’s stressed. The Somali influx forced Lewiston’s administrators to act, create language instruction programs largely out of thin air, and then – in the midst of community crisis – face a meticulous, elongated federal review.

In the end, the DOJ issued a 12-page document saying, “Keep up the good work,” an assessment that has eluded districts, larger and smaller, that didn’t experience the sudden demographic shift that occurred in Lewiston (and also Auburn, which was not part of the DOJ review).

Given settlement actions the DOJ has executed in other states, such as in New Jersey, Illinois and Texas, its solid appraisal of Lewiston shouldn’t be discounted.

From here, though, just like 2002, future ELL needs are unknown.

Projections of ELL students, the number of which has increased tenfold since December 2000, aren’t reliable, as fluctuations have prevented accurate forecasting. ELL staffing, though, is at its high point: a director, 21 teachers, two educational technicians, five tutors/interpreters and one parent/community specialist.

Pupil counts could dip, as some excel in English instruction and exit the program. It could swell, if another sizable in-migration occurs, such as what occurred recently with the influx of Bantu Somali. Lewiston is literally writing the book on ELL for Somali immigrants, as no other community has experienced similar, swift demographic changes.

Whatever occurs, the DOJ review shows Lewiston should have confidence in its schools to adapt.

They’ve done great work so far.