AUGUSTA – The first nine of 241 Maine schools will receive laptop computers in March as part of an innovative plan advanced two years ago by Gov. Angus S. King. But some cash-strapped legislators searching for alternatives to close a $272 million budget shortfall urged the administration Wednesday to delay the proposal’s implementation.

“It is way too early in the budget discussions to be moving ahead with the laptop pilot program,” House Republican leader Joseph Bruno of Raymond said in a prepared statement. “In the face of cuts the Legislature is going to have to consider in health care, you had better believe that the laptop fund is on the table. Given the uncertainty of the funding, the announcement should have been delayed.”

The state has signed a $37.2 million contract with Apple that, over the next two years, would provide iBook laptop computers to 36,000 seventh- and eighth-grade pupils across the state. On Wednesday, J. Duke Albanese, commissioner of the Maine Department of Education, released the names of nine regional demonstration schools that will receive the first batch of computers (see graphic).

Yellow Light Breen, spokesman for the state Department of Education, said the program includes wireless networks for the classrooms and extensive support and training for teachers. Funding for the program includes a $1 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help train teachers and to provide a $10,000 stipend for teachers serving as regional integration monitors to work with other teachers in each area.

“What we’re doing is testing out the solution on the one hand, but we’re also creating sites where teachers in the region could go and observe teaching with the technology and also maybe get some practice themselves,” Breen said. “Each of the nine schools will be getting a regional integration mentor who will be able to work with teachers in the region.”

In Guilford, school Superintendent Matthew Oliver said his teaching staff and administrators were excited, but not particularly surprised, about being chosen as a demonstration site for Piscataquis and Penobscot counties.

Oliver said all of the school’s eighth-graders already have one-to-one access to computer technology through the assistance of a grant from Guilford of Maine, a local manufacturer. The program is in its second year.

“The students are truly using these devices as educational tools,” he said. “They have several computer-based activities that they do on a daily basis dealing with spreadsheets, publishing and animation.”

Greg Bellmare, the middle school’s principal, said the state’s decision to select PCMS was pretty much of a “no-brainer” since the rationale for a successful demonstration site demands that a school district have individuals on staff who know how to use the technology and who already have progressed up the learning curve.

“We know what not to do,” he said. “We’ve lived it for two years and at least two to three school districts from across the state visit us each week to learn more.”

The state has set aside $30 million in a Maine Learning Technology Fund that, in addition to other dedicated accounts, will cover the program’s contract with Apple. But the agreement contains a clause that allows the state to withdraw if the Legislature fails to deliver the money.

Republican Rep. Ken Honey of Boothbay said Wednesday he couldn’t understand why the state had chosen the school in his hometown for a demonstration project when it was clear to him and many of his constituents that the laptop program was extravagant and unnecessary. Assistant GOP Senate floor leader Paul Davis of Sangerville found it odd that the state had selected a school in his district when PCMS already has an advanced laptop program.

While he generally supports the laptop concept, Davis said the program had to be evaluated in the overall context of the budget debate. Some Republicans even intimated Wednesday that the state Department of Education may have selected schools in districts where lawmakers either opposed the project or were on the fence to whip up constituent support back home.

“Frankly, our primary goal was to select schools that showed that they could make this a success,” said Breen. “Political considerations were not a factor here.”