This fall, students at Gray-New Gloucester and Lakes Region high schools will have new Apple laptop computers. Students at Windham High School will not.

School Administrative District 15 has purchased 576 laptops for its Gray-New Gloucester High School students, at a cost of about $139,300, said Superintendent Victoria Burns.

“It is a wonderful opportunity for us,” Burns said. “There is no question in our mind that in order for our kids to be good thinkers and problem solvers, they need access to technology. This will give us the infrastructure for our expectations to be realized.”

Lakes Region bought 700 laptops, costing the district about $150,000, said Joshua Sturk, director of instructional technology for Lakes Region.

“What we’re trying to do here is change what’s going on in the classrooms,” Sturk said. “We’re trying to promote more collaboration between parents, teachers and students and trying to get our students to look at problem solving from a different way.”

Windham-Raymond School Board Chairman Toby Pennels said the school department couldn’t afford to buy laptops for its high school students this year after the district underwent an at-times tumultuous budget season.

“I don’t think there is an opposition necessarily, but it was not the priority for money,” Pennels said. “We haven’t given up on it. We’re still exploring it, but it isn’t going to happen this fall.”

Last month the state announced it had struck a deal with Apple to buy 64,000 laptops at the reduced rate of $242. Maine was the first state to supply laptops to middle school students, said David Connerty-Marin, spokesman with the Department of Education. Maine is also the first to provide them to high school students, he said.

“We had tremendous success with our middle school laptop program,” Connerty-Marin said. “We see that it engages students, and it’s a great learning tool. One of the things we stress repeatedly is that it’s not just about the technology. It’s about using the laptop as an educational tool.”

Unlike the middle school program, for which the state fully pays, school districts are responsible for buying their own laptops for high schools.

The state does kick in some money for high school laptops from federal stimulus money it received, but the amount each school district receives is determined by the Essential Programs and Services funding formula, which takes into account each town’s property tax rates and school size.

For example, the formula could determine that a school department would need to come up with $200 of the cost of the $242 laptops, with the state paying the remaining $42, Connerty-Marin said. It could also be the opposite, which prevents some school districts from affording the laptops, he said.

SAD 15 is taking the high school program one step further, Burns said.

The school district will recycle its middle school laptops into the elementary school. That will allow the school to have three laptop computers in each classroom from kindergarten through second grade with carts holding laptops in each class that will allow one computer for every two students, Burns said. Grades 3 and 4 will have their own computer labs, every classroom will have three laptop computers and a cart filled with laptops to allow every two students to have one computer. Students in Grades 5 and 6 will each have their own computers.

“That is our plan right now,” Burns said. “This will also ensure that our teachers are using the computers in their instruction. The public needs to know that our students are benefiting from this.”

In addition to the computers, Apple is providing a four-year replacement cycle at the $242 per laptop rate, battery replacement and a four-year warranty, software installed on the laptops and staff development.

Maine has 119 high schools, and currently 65 schools have enrolled in the program, Connerty-Marin said.