Schools from Houlton, Unity and Bar Harbor are among the seven schools or school districts selected Wednesday to participate as “laboratories” in a $10 million project to enhance curriculum and teaching methods.

The names of the seven districts and schools were announced Wednesday at Bowdoin College, Brunswick. They were selected to be Beacon Schools by the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance from among 84 applications statewide.

The selected schools are:

SAD 29, Houlton High School.

SAD 3 (Unity), the Mt. View elementary, junior high and high schools.

Union 98, Bar Harbor area.

SAD 59 (Madison), the Athens Elementary/Junior High School.

SAD 75 (Topsham) and the Brunswick School Department, involves six schools in these departments.

Scarborough School Department.

York School Department.

The project will provide at least $250,000 to each school or district over the five-year life of the program.

Jackie Mitchell, mathematics consultant with the Maine Department of Education, said that the Beacon Schools programs will draw upon the creativity, knowledge and support of communities, educators and researchers at all levels.

“It’s a first to have all of them working together to increase the chances for Maine’s kids in fields that involve mathematics and science,” Mitchell said early Wednesday afternoon.

The individual projects involve restructuring the way that students are taught, but the approaches vary around the state, Mitchell said. Some are looking at changing the length of the school day or class periods, while others are looking at cooperative learning and peer coaching among students in addition to having students of different ages in the same classroom, as Scarborough is proposing.

In Houlton, she said, the district wants to revamp the entire mathematics and science programs at the high-school level. And in Bar Harbor, one of its strengths is the project’s intent to involve all the constituents in the district to participate in the development of the new programs.

A key element to the Beacon Schools program, Mitchell said, will be that what the schools and districts learn will be disseminated throughout the state.

“We just don’t want seven top schools,” she said. “In five years we want a majority of schools doing these creative things.”

In the first year of the project, each school or district will receive $50,000, which will increase to nearly $90,000 by the final year.

The $10 million grant was one of several national grants by the science foundation as part of its Statewide Systematic Initiative program. It will be administered by the alliance, which is a non-profit group composed of business people, educators and mathematics and science professionals.

A large part of the first-year’s funding will be provided by $300,000 appropriated by the Maine Legislature.

Mitchell said that those schools and districts not selected will be encouraged to continue with their projects for possible funding elsewhere or for exchanging information with districts around the state, including the Beacon Schools.