The Windham School Board and the Fire Department are looking to pool their resources to purchase 11 new automated external defibrillators for town buildings and the new Windham High School.

The Windham Board of Selectmen gave their conditional approval to the Fire Department to waive the bid process pending some further price shopping after Assistant Fire Chief Robert Leuci explained at a meeting on Monday, June 2, that he believed the model being sought was the best value.

Six of the defibrillators will go into the high school and the town’s five will go into the library, town hall, senior center, transfer station and Griffin Park, said Leuci.

Only two town buildings, the administrative building and the cable station, will not have defibrillators, but both have easy access to them at the town hall and senior center, respectively. In purchasing the machines together, the distributor being considered is offering a 20 percent discount, Leuci said, for the defibrillators and the required cabinets required for them.

The model being sought, a Phillips FRx 2, is a newer model that will result in cost savings long term, said Leuci.

“With the on-site machines, we have to replace the pads every two years. This saves us about $1,500 each year on purchasing and replacing child pads,” Leuci said.

The child pads emit a different charge than the adult pads. The model has a key to automatically switch the defibrillators to the child pad setting.

There is $8,500 budgeted for the town’s five defibrillators. To buy five of the FRx 2 machines, the department will run about $1,300 over budget, said Town Administrator David Sullivan.