Where do you live? A single admin in the schools is how it is done where I live, I know this because it's my job. Every government agency I've worked for uses Windows XP images and Dell computers. That would include the Army and the School District. We just received 113 new Dell 990's here, which ship with Win 7 home premium and we slap the School District's XP image on top of them. The internet filtering is done at a higher level by a third party and the individual admins in the schools have no control over this. As for internet explorer, many webpages, state and federal ones in particular, are designed specifically for IE. For example, some aspects of People Soft do not work properly with Chrome and I have to use my IEtab Extension to get it to work.
My highschool only had computers in the Visual Communications class, so be happy you even have computers.
My highschool only had computers in the Visual Communications class, so be happy you even have computers.