PORTLAND (AP) – Maine has signed off on a $41 million contract with Apple Computer Corp. to provide new laptop computers to more than 30,000 seventh- and eighth-graders and their teachers, extending the laptop program for another four years, officials said Thursday.

Maine was the first state to equip students statewide with laptop computers, and Maine officials say the initiative remains the biggest of its type in the nation.

All told, Apple will equip 32,000 students and 4,000 teachers with iBook notebook computers and upgraded wireless networks.

The four-year contracts also includes warranties and perks like professional development for each of Maine’s 241 public middle schools.

The program, aimed at eliminating the so-called “digital divide” between wealthy and poor students, has been deemed a success by administrators.

In Cape Elizabeth, technology coordinator Gary Lanoie said he would have a problem on his hands if the state failed to continue the program.

“The first four years have been really good,” Lanoie said Thursday. “If we didn’t find a way to continue the project at our middle schools, our teachers would be very upset with me. They might lynch me. It’s that ingrained.”

The new laptops are improved over the older units, with greater memory, faster processors and built-in DVD combo drives, officials say.

As for older laptops, they’re being kept instead of discarded. Those computers are being upgraded with fundraising support from former Gov. Angus King, who initiated the laptop program, and school districts are redeploying them in other grades or for other purposes.

That means the total number of laptops in Maine public schools this fall will number more than 70,000, said Maine Education Commission Susan Gendron.

“It’s a testimony to how successful the program has been that the districts have kept the laptops” instead of discarding them, she said.

The Maine Department of Education announced in March that Apple had been chosen over CDW-G, which provides technological services to government, education and health care. CDW-G’s proposal called for Lenovo Thinkpads in partnership with other vendors.

The Apple deal that has been sorted out since then is similar to the one reached when the project was originally launched in 2002.

It works out to an annual cost of $289 per laptop – compared to $300 per unit contained in the original bid, officials have said.

Unlike the original deal, this one will also be made available to private and parochial schools, as well as the state’s high school and elementary schools.

The state is also making available additional money through the essential programs and services school funding formula to extend the program into high schools. More than 30 high schools already have some laptops deployed.

Some school districts plan to purchase additional laptops through the new contract to further expand access to computers, Gendron said.

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