After one year, Jim Thorpe School officials say they're very happy with the decision to give all high school students a laptop.

In light of that success, the board has decided to expand the program, putting technology in the hands of every student in the district.The school board voted unanimously Monday night to provide Apple laptops for students in seventh and eighth grades, and iPads for students in kindergarten through sixth grade."We want to level the playing field and ensure access to resources aren't dependent on income, that everyone has access they need when they need it," district technology coordinator Jerome Brown said during a recent presentation on the project.They agreed to a four-year lease with Apple where the district will pay $847,349. The board also has the option to buy the equipment at the end of the lease for $1.While providing hundreds of laptops and tablets might sound expensive, the yearly payment of roughly $217,000 represents just about one half of one percent of the district's proposed 2016-17 budget.Board President Michael Principe said that the district's program, the "Olympian Learning Environment," is successful because it uses them to enrich the learning experience for children. He praised superintendent Brian Gasper, Brown and the district's principals for their forward thinking."Less than 5 percent of the school districts in the country have the high school one-to-one, we're now going K-8. Among school districts nationally, we're way ahead of the curve," he said. "I think we're going to reap some big benefits long-term."The numbers of students using the equipment is impressive as well: 95 percent of high school students choose to take their laptops home with them each night, according to district technology coordinator Jerome Brown."The technology has been infused. If you walk through the high school, you see the laptops used every day all the time in the classrooms. It's really infused and started to change the culture of the high school," Brown said at a recent meeting.Students have also exceeded expectations when it comes to taking care of their laptops, Brown said. To take the laptops home, students had to purchase insurance, which costs at most $50 per year, and is less for students with free and reduced lunch.Brown said the number of cracked screens and spilled drinks is no more than a handful.For now, students in kindergarten through eighth grade will not be allowed to take their laptops home. But district officials expect that will change for students in seventh and eighth grades sometime in the future."The plan is within time, as we have all the devices in students' hands, then we will absolutely consider permitting seventh- and eighth-grade students to take them home," Gasper said.