BUCKFIELD – William Shuttleworth has watched Internet-ready laptops give his 110 junior high school students a new way to learn and view the world.

“I have seen firsthand what it’s done to radically change the educational focus and passion children have for learning,” said the superintendent of SAD 39, which includes Hartford, Sumner and Buckfield.

So Shuttleworth is all for Gov. John Baldacci’s plan to extend the laptop program to high schools next fall.

He’s just not sure he can afford to pay almost half of the cost.

“Do we lay off a quality teacher or do we buy laptops?” Shuttleworth said.

On Tuesday, as some legislators voiced concerns over the latest details of the governor’s laptop plan, many area educators expressed worries of their own.

Under the plan, all public high school teachers and more than 30,000 ninth- and 10th-graders would receive laptops in the fall. All 11th- and 12th-grade students would get them in the fall of 2005.

The state and school systems would share the cost of the machines, with schools picking up 45 percent. The plan does not address whether poorer school systems would pay less.

The existing laptop program gives computers to all public school seventh- and eighth-graders. The state pays for the $300 machines and wiring costs, while schools must pay for technical support and storage.

The SAD 9 school system has been happy with the laptop program, said Assistant Superintendent Susan Pratt. But she didn’t know how it could afford to help pay for laptops at the high school.

SAD 9, which comprises nine towns in the Farmington area, would need 260 computers for ninth-grade students alone, she said. The district would also have to pay thousands of dollars for storage, teacher training and other necessities.

“It’s a lot of money,” Pratt said. “Where’s the money going to come from?”

In Lewiston, Superintendent Leon Levesque had similar questions.

Although high school students could get the laptops as early as this fall, school systems wouldn’t have to start paying for them until the 2006 fiscal year. Levesque wasn’t sure how his budget would look then and which other items – such as a full-day kindergarten program – would take precedence.

“Right from the start, my school committee would probably be split,” he said. “People see the need and like the technology. How do you balance that with all the other priorities you’ve got going?”

But in other school systems, including Auburn and SAD 17 in Oxford Hills, officials said they would happily opt for the high school laptop program, whether or not they had to share the cost.

Auburn has already stopped buying desktop computers in favor of laptops. It has given laptops to all of the high school’s 160 teachers and has started training teachers to use them.

Superintendent Barbara Eretzian said her school system would likely jump at the chance to have laptops for its high-schoolers. It would find a way to pay for them. After all, the machines have transformed education at the middle school.

“In my 31 years of education, this is a program that has had the most positive impact on kids that I’ve seen,” she said.

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