Running a large high school is a big job, and it’s a job made even more challenging in Lewiston by poverty and immigration.

Gus LeBlanc, Lewiston High School principal since 2006, has tackled that job by firmly insisting on high standards and giving students the support they need to achieve them.

LeBlanc is leaving after 15 years with the Lewiston Schools to head Lee Academy about 60 miles north of Bangor. He has spent a total of 38 years in education.

High among LeBlanc’s accomplishments is moving the percentage of students graduating in four years from 58 percent to 73 percent.

LeBlanc instituted a new eligibility policy for student athletes, requiring them to attend to their academics before being allowed to play sports.

He required tougher courses, like insisting students take algebra I rather than pre-algebra, and then giving them ways to receive intensive instruction if necessary.

And the L-A Community will long remember the loss in 2006 of three Air Force Junior ROTC students in a plane crash, and the way LeBlanc and the school’s staff handled the crisis.

Lewiston is a proud city, but we also recognize that pockets of extreme poverty in the inner city represent extra burdens and challenges for our schools.

LeBlanc deserves credit for accepting those challenges and moving the high school forward.

Candidate’s dancing

should be non-issue

A guy’s got to make a living, right?

And Eric Brakey was making his living as an actor in New York, certainly an acceptable goal for an ambitious young man.

That, we believe, reasonably explains his video appearance two years ago dancing in a tiny bathing suit while shaking his maracas.

For most candidates, this might spell a quick end to a budding political career, but Brakey is proud of the work he did as a professional actor in New York promoting a coconut drink.

The ad came to the attention of Maine media, including the Sun Journal, when Mike Hein, formerly of the Christian Civic League, passed around a compressed version of the video, pointing out that Brakey is running for the Maine Senate as a “family values” conservative.

Family values probably vary from family to family, so we’re always a little wary of that political label.

But family values are generally taken to include avoiding sexual immodesty.

Most American men, who are not Olympic divers, would feel uncomfortable wearing a Speedo, let alone dancing in it.

It’s difficult to get them up and dancing at a wedding, and that’s with their clothes on.

While Hein said Brakey looked to be “demon possessed,” we simply thought he looked, well, like a white guy dancing. Not bad, but not ready for the Bolshoi, either.

On Tuesday, Brakey wasn’t apologizing for his performance, and we admire him for that.

There are plenty of political sex scandals to watch, but this isn’t one of them.

rrhoades@sunjournal.com

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