No tax increase and new Apple laptops for high school students were two major items to come up this week at the Jim Thorpe Area School District board meeting.

Every Jim Thorpe High School student will get a laptop for use during the next school year after a unanimous motion by the board to sign a four-year lease with Apple.The One to One initiative would allow the students to take the laptops home as well as using them in school.One board member, Dr. Michael Principe, slapped his hands together, saying "yes" after the vote was taken."I think this is a great deal," said board member Dr. Michael Principe. "The contract not only includes a computer for each high school student, but it includes professional training for the program as well. It's less than $30,000 more than what we were paying before. The benefit to students is incredible."The contract with Apple runs four years and will cost the district $214,516.34 annually.The first payment is due by July 10.Joe Brown, director of Technology and Information for the school district, said around 620 computers would be ordered.At the end of the lease, computers can be traded in for a credit on new purchases.Brown said the students would connect wirelessly to the Internet while in the high school."I think it's going to be beneficial during the day because teachers are now sometimes running around looking laptop carts that aren't being used," board member Gerald Strubinger said. "That chops into instruction time. It can't be said that we aren't putting a lot of money into technical education in this district."The board also unanimously voted to hold the line on property taxes and pass the district's 2015-16 operating budget.Strubinger made a motion during the March board meeting to reduce the local millage, but it failed due to lack of a second.The district will remain at 45.52 mills for 2015-16.Jim Thorpe's preliminary budget included a 2.2 percent tax increase, but district staff has whittled that to zero since February.In other news, the board approved James Vaughn, Tyler Mangold, Mike Mulderig, Craig Tompkins to be employed as summer workers throughout the district.While the agenda called for them to make $7.25 per hour, which is minimum wage in Pennsylvania, the board, on a motion by Dennis McGinley, voted to increase the amount to $8 per hour.