FARMINGTON -- Board directors settled on a plan to deal with repair costs to computers provided by the Maine Learning Technology Initiative.

On Tuesday night, the Mt. Blue Regional School District voted on a computer-protection plan after hearing recommendations from technology director Angel Allen and superintendent Michael Cormier.

Parents would be billed a sliding-scale fee of $30 to $50 at the beginning of the school year, and would be required to pay a $50 deductible for any repairs not covered under the Maine State Department of Education's program. This will be an annual fee until the student graduates, Cormier said.

"This is an option, and no parent will be required to participate," he said.

The school district will document each incident not covered by warranty and also will request a replacement for any machine not covered by warranty. The state's replacement computers, Allen said, are stored in a computer depot in Westbrook, and the district will be allotted a percentage based on the number of students in the six grades.

"Students will be asked to pay for a repair only after it has been rejected for what's called a buffer pool replacement by the state," Allen said. "They clearly won't pay for damaged chargers or carrying cases. The rest they'll review on a case-by-case basis."

Allen will report to the board at the end of the year with a summary of non-warranty repairs. She explained that, since the Department of Education anticipated reduced enrollment statewide next year, the district possibly could have a higher percentage of replacement computers available.

"The state takes the damaged computers back, and they are evaluated and repaired by an Apple-certified facility," Allen said.

"We've talked to a lot of other school districts to see how they handle this, and we decided this plan would work for us."

Parents would be required to pay a maximum of $100 per family into the repair fund pool, even if they have more than two children with laptops.

Cormier stressed that this method of handling repair costs was a well-intentioned trial effort that could be modified as necessary.

"If there is money left in the pool at the end of the school year, then the district could issue folks a coupon with the remainder divided evenly across all participants," Cormier said.

Board member Iris Silverstein suggested an addendum allowing families to apply for financial assistance if needed, and that those funds could come from the technology repair budget.

Board members did not agree to add that amendment to the final, approved version.