AUBURN — The iPad 2s have arrived, and half of the city’s kindergarten students will get one during the second week of school, the Auburn School Committee was told Wednesday night.

The committee voted in April to give every kindergartner an iPad this fall after hearing a presentation that a student who wasn’t learning letters and reading skills did better, and caught up to peers, when that student was taught with an iPad provided by a teacher. Auburn is among the first in Maine to give iPad tablet computers to kindergartners.

Multiple Pathways leader Mike Muir said the remaining half of Auburn kindergartners will get iPads in November.

The reason why half will get them in September and half in mid-November is to gain research by comparing how students with iPads learn compared to those without. Students will get them at random.

“We will literally pull names out of a hat. Those will be the classrooms that start out with iPads.”

There’s no guarantee, but quality research can open doors to large-scale grants, Muir said. Without research, there’s no chance for grants, he said. The research “is a big step for us.”

The School Department is working with the University of Maine at Farmington on the research. “When you do research an institution needs to review procedures and make sure you’re doing everything ethically and responsibly. That’s coming along well,” Muir said.

Kindergarten teachers will spend Thursday and Friday learning how to teach with the iPads, he said.

Meanwhile the School Department is continuing to plan for a national conference on iPads in primary grades this November in Auburn.

“We’ve limited participants to 100. Apple is helping us with logistics and advertising,” Muir said. “We’re very excited about this. Our teachers will get a national iPad conference free.”

The conference will be held at the Hilton Garden Inn.

Committee member Bonnie Hayes said people “just don’t understand how we can send these iPads home with kindergarten students,” and worry that they could be stolen from 5-year-olds.

“They’re also concerned that we’re providing iPad computers for families,” she said. Hayes said she needs to know how the iPads would be sent home, how children will be protected.

Muir said those are legitimate worries, and the iPads will not go home until school officials have come up with policies and procedures. “We share some of the same concerns,” Muir said.

City Councilor David Young asked what the cost of the iPad project is, and where the money is coming from.

He was told the total cost is about $240,000, and the money is left over from the 2010-11 budget.

Young said some people want to know how Auburn can buy iPads when positions have been cut.

Committee Chairman David Das said the money for the first round of iPads came from one-time federal grant money, which would have disappeared in June if not spent.

If all goes as expected, the goal is grant money will buy iPads for next year’s kindergartners while the existing iPads stay with what will be then first-graders.

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