Eunice Alpasan, an 18-year-old senior at Lane Tech, said she used a Macbook in her journalism class, but the school isn’t Mac-exclusive. “In one of my classes, we do use Chromebooks,” she said.

When Russ Hencinski looks out of his classroom window at Lane Tech High School, the science and astronomy teacher sees a strip mall with a Jewel-Osco grocery store and other smaller shops. But in ...