Angus King and others are seeking donations.
By Lindsay Tice
Staff Writer

A legion of educators and business leaders have joined former Gov. Angus King in a movement to expand the state’s first-in-the-nation middle school laptop program to high schoolers.

The group hopes to raise enough money to add ninth-graders next year and one grade each year until students in grades seven through 12 have laptop computers.

“I don’t think it’s fair to say you can have these tools for a couple of years and then take them away,” King said Thursday.

First proposed by the former governor in 2000, the $37 million laptop project puts a portable computer in the hands of all public school seventh- and eighth-graders.

The project started last year when 17,000 seventh-grade students and teachers got their own snow-white Apple iBooks to use in school. In addition, about 17,000 eighth-graders and teachers received computers this fall.

Because the laptops stay with the schools, students do not get to keep them after the year ends.

The project has shown some early success. A study last winter found that students and teachers thought the computers enhanced learning. Many school officials say absenteeism and disciplinary problems have dropped since the computers arrived. Students seem more engaged in class work.

Laptops for seventh- and eighth-graders have been budgeted by the state through 2005.

But educators, including former Education Commissioner J. Duke Albanese, and business leaders want to take it a step further.

They have been talking with Gov. John Baldacci’s office, the Maine Department of Education, Apple, businesspeople and school officials to find a way to expand the program. Ideally, many say, they would like the program to grow with this year’s eighth-graders, adding a grade every year until grades seven through 12 have laptops.

“Can you learn without the laptops? Sure. But we have a very good thing going in this state,” said Peter Geiger, a vice president at Geiger in Lewiston and member of the Maine Coalition for Excellence in Education.

Geiger and others are worried that the state will miss a golden opportunity to enhance education – and the future of Maine’s workforce – if it doesn’t keep the laptops through high school. They also believe it’s essential for Maine’s high school reform effort.

“We’re getting such excellent results,” said Ron Bancroft, a Portland businessman and chairman of the Maine Legislature’s laptop advisory board and the Maine Coalition for Excellence in Education. “We want to extend this kind of opportunity for high school students. It’s going to be a little bit of a tragedy if it doesn’t happen.”

The cost

The law that created the laptop program allows for a high school expansion as phase two of the program.

But the problem is money.

The middle school laptop program costs about $10 million a year to run, including teacher training. Proponents of expansion said it could cost between $6 million and $7 million to bring the laptops to ninth grade next fall.

Once the infrastructure is complete, King believes it would ultimately cost $18 million to $25 million a year for the program to run for grades seven through 12.

That’s about 1 percent of the money spent on education in Maine each year, King said.

“It’s not that huge a part of the overall budget. It’s really a question of bang for the buck,” he said.

Baldacci spokesman Lee Umphrey said the governor is open to expanding the laptop program. But the state must also deal with a host of other budget priorities, including a $113 million Medicaid shortfall.

Proponents of the expansion are working on ways to get around those budget issues.

Some have talked with private businesses about forming partnerships with local schools or donating money to pay for the computers. The state has received more than $2 million in donations and pledges for teacher training, but companies don’t usually like paying long term for a government-run program, King said.

“They say, ‘Hey, you don’t come to us to pay for your snow plowing,'” he said.

Others have looked into a cost-sharing program that would require the state and local school systems to each pay part of the bill. Some school systems are already planning to buy laptops for their own ninth-graders next year, but most say they can’t afford it. And King worries that will cause the kind of inequity that the laptop program was supposed to abolish.

Proponents say they will have to find a creative way to move the laptops into high schools.

They believe it will be difficult. But not impossible.

“It’s as close to revolutionary as you can get,” King said. “We’d lose a significant opportunity if we didn’t find a way. Maine People are creative and I believe we can do it.”

ltice@sunjournal.com