An elementary school in Sarasota, Florida is sending several hundred working Macs to the trash heap — in keeping with the school district’s “PC-only” policy.

Piled up in the cafeteria of the Emma Booker school, 140 G3 and G4 laptops and over 50 iMac and eMac machines await the scrap heap.

An account in the local paper takes on dramatic overtones:

Sarasota County Public School system employees who alerted the Pelican Press to the salvage effort asked not to be identified because they feared retribution. “All of the machines are still working,” said one. “The teachers asked if they could buy them or give them to the kids. We were told, ‘No.’”

Putting the Macs out to pasture is the result of a decision by Superintendent Gary Norris, who headed the school system from 2004-2008, who declared the school system would be PC-only, the paper said.

Even the county school district’s program that donates computers to needy kids, called Texcellence, is a Mac-free zone.

“We’ve never used Macs,” foundation spokeswoman Laura Breeze told Pelican Press. The group recently received 1,100 used PC computers and is refurbishing them and adding software before giving them out.

At a time when budgets are tight, you have to wonder why a school district would send working computers to the scrap heap.