LEWISTON – Since a tougher eligibility policy was put in place last year, fewer athletes are ineligible and fewer are failing classes, Lewiston High School Principal Gus LeBlanc told the Lewiston School Committee on Monday night.

LeBlanc said he came to his job as principal believing Lewiston students could meet high expectations. “What I’m looking at convinces me that’s the case. We have significant improvement. I’m excited about it.”

In 2006, 32 athletes were ineligible in the middle of the first quarter. Last year, that number fell to 14. This year only three out of 317 student athletes are ineligible to participate, LeBlanc said.

The reason is students are responding to higher expectations.

“They have stepped up to the plate,” LeBlanc said. “I am impressed,” he said. “We are doing significantly better than when we had a very lax policy. The last policy we had 25 to 30 kids ineligible all the time. We don’t now.”

Before last fall as long as athletes passed five classes they could play. Students typically take between six to eight classes. Rules now say that to play participants must pass six courses.

Athletic Director Jason Fuller said the new policy allows time for coaches to find out if any of their athletes may be in academic trouble, and can intervene while there’s still time to improve grades.

But committee member John Butler, who has opposed the tougher policy, blasted it again Monday night.

Data from the spring and fall sports show that black students are three or four times more likely than white students to become ineligible, he said. “There are a lot of words to describe this data, and none of them are good or positive,” Butler said.

One senior last year became ineligible to play “because he failed calculus,” receiving a grade of 69. That’s troubling, Butler said, adding it’s wrong to take away a student’s opportunity to play.

The solution, he said, is to change the policy “to a more realistic and workable model.” Not allowing a student to participate in sports “is unacceptable to me,” he said. “Sports is one way to get our students in post secondary education. This policy restricts some from this opportunity.”

LeBlanc said the student Butler talked about actually was failing two classes, and didn’t present the full picture. The student “decided to stop doing his work, taking a number of zeroes, and didn’t make up tests.”

Why a student fails has nothing to do with gender or race, LeBlanc said. “It’s about behavior.” Students who fail miss school, don’t pass in homework, miss tests they don’t make up, he said. “That’s not true 100 percent of the time, but it’s true 90 to 95 percent of the time,” LeBlanc said.

Someone can call the current policy unfair, “but the outcome has been that more kids are participating, fewer kids are ineligible, and fewer kids are failing classes. That’s not just white kids. It’s black kids. It’s Hispanics. It’s Indians. It’s English Language Learners. It’s regular students.”

And the current policy allows coaches to work with athletes before they fail, “not to wait until they fail,” LeBlanc said. “That has made a significant difference.”

The committee took no action on the policy Monday night.

In other business the committee heard a report on freshmen and sophomore teaming at the high school, where groups of teachers work with the same group of students.

By collaborating teachers get to know students, find out the best ways to teach them, and show students how to develop better study skills, Assistant Principal Beth Bradley said. The result has been better teaching and learning.

Freshmen teaming has been in place since 2000. Sophomore teaming since 2006. “The initial goal was to lower the drop out rate,” she said.

The number of freshmen who quit school has come down. From 1995 to 1999 an average of 21.6 freshmen dropped out, compared to a current average of 10 students.

The number of 10th grade dropouts has not come down, Bradley said. From 1999-95 an average of 14.2 dropped out, compared to the current 16.5.