I certainly hope you are not leaving the students out of the loop, for they are your customers after all. Let them know what is on the table and discuss it with them. Their input could be valuable in many unseen ways.
The university I am attending here in the US is using gmail, but it is renamed and using a .edu address. I like it much better than other accounts I have had from other providers (Yahoo, MS, ect). It is much easier to filter/manipulate/read than the others, and also better at filtering spam. 99.9% of the spam I have gotten is from the school and always labeled "IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT" in the subject (I'm looking at YOU, ETSU, for spamming crap that is not important to students). Anything with those two words goes straight to the shit pile...
