AUGUSTA – The former head of Maine’s English-as-a-second-language program is to be sentenced Thursday for sexual assaults that happened in Massachusetts in the mid-1970s.

Bernard “Barney” Berube pleaded guilty in a Berkshire, Mass., court to two counts of assault and battery on a child younger than 14. The 59-year-old Augusta resident was ordered held pending a sentencing hearing Thursday afternoon in Superior Court, said Fred Lance, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office.

Each of the offenses carries a penalty of up to five years in prison, said Berube’s attorney, Scott Ellis. Prosecutors are seeking a two-year sentence, with all but one year suspended, Ellis said.

The assaults on two 10-year-old boys occurred in the summer of 1976 when Berube was a counselor at a camp in Stockbridge, Mass.

Berube could be charged 31 years later because Massachusetts extended its statute of limitations following child-sex scandals in the Catholic Church.

Berube worked for the Maine Department of Education from 1978 to last year. He directed the state’s multicultural and bilingual education programs for the state and wrote a book on ESL programs.