GORHAM – The Gorham School Committee has approved leasing 475 laptop computers through the state’s laptop program, Maine Learning Technology Initiative, buying its current, leased laptops for nearly $79,000.

Every Gorham student in grades 6 through 12 will be provided a laptop when school opens in the fall.

Newly leased MacBook Air laptops will be provided to Gorham’s seventh and eighth grades at the middle school. Dennis Crowe, director of technology for the Gorham School Department, said on Monday the four-year lease will cost Gorham about $15,000 total and the department also has an option to buy them at the end of the lease.

Sixth-grade students will inherit the MacBooks used this year by the seventh-and eighth-grade students. Crowe said the memory of the four-year old computers would be upgraded.

Crowe said plans call for the high school to keep its current laptops for use through the 2014-2015 school year.

In the town’s three elementary schools with kindergarten through fifth grade, every classroom will have five laptops and each school has two carts with 25 laptops in each cart, Crowe said. He also said each of the three elementary schools has a computer lab.

Gorham will own the 1,675 laptops utilized by the sixth grade and high school.

“We’re buying out the lease,” Crowe said.

The buyout cost is $47 per laptop, equaling $78,725, which, Crowe said, was approved in this year’s school budget.

“It’s a good financial decision,” Crowe said.

Some of the buyout computers will be utilized for parts and others for spares.

According to School Department policy, Gorham students in grades 6 through 12 will have to pay $25 to enroll in a laptop protection program.