Buy her one of the Asus Eee PCs that comes with Xandros Linux and leave the default O/S on it. More than enough for what she needs and boots up very quickly. Dead simple to use. Difficult to break. Then use the other laptop for yourself with whatever distro you might like to try

One of the primary reasons many schools are still tied tightly to proprietary software is that the state departments of education are still on proprietary software. Worse, those Depts. of Ed. develop systems that require proprietary software--and then mandate those systems. Even web-based systems (where you'd hope that some vendor independence would arise) are often designed in such a way that no browser other than IE can be used. Where you need to start with those legislators is in getting them to mandate that state departments of education open reporting systems and mechanisms. When schools find out that they can actually meet their state requirements for reporting and save lots of licensing $$$ at the same time, the beginnings of a move will be on. There are many, many districts that would be overjoyed to find out that the cost of meeting their state (or federal) requirements could be significantly lowered. Retraining a reasonably competent administrative person to use Open Office Writer (as an example) instead of Microsoft Word is no big thing. It's as easy (and in many cases *easier*) than retraining that same administrator to move from Office 2003 to Office 2007, and one needn't pay licensing fees for the privilege.

You've no idea how complex it can be. Tracking attendance? Let's see... was the kid present or absent? In middle schools and high schools, in which periods was the kid present (or absent)? Has the number of absences risen to the point where there should be involvement of truancy officers? Does the system track in such a way as to provide proper county/state/federal reports? I'm not even gonna start in on things like whether the kid is eligible (and has been properly qualified for free or reduced-cost lunches. Or whether the kid should be in an EL (English Learning) track. Or where he or she is in that track. Or where they transferred from (or to) and on and on and on... All of which impacts funding amounts for one or more programs (or whether you get funding at all). In our tiny district, it sucks up one FTE just to handle system support for the SIS (Student Information System), and one server pretty much dedicated to running MSSQL for the back-end. The only reason basic SIS support can be handled by only one person is that we have only about 2000 students and that we have a very dedicated support person. We still need attendance and food service and other program folks who spend part to all of their day just doing data entry to make sure the system is up-to-date and also system administration (IT) types to keep things running, and backed up, and patched, and install new versions, and etc.

Competent admins of any stripe willing to work for typical school district salaries are difficult to find. The only reason many of us do it is because we feel it's the right thing to do. It certainly isn't because we're gonna be rich. How many slashdotters would be willing to give up over 50% of their potential salary in industry because it would help make a school better?

Again, the same is true for Windows or Macs. I know from years of experience as an admin in a school district that attempting to get the majority of teachers to undertake any sort of computer training for themselves is nigh unto impossible. Free course offered right at work? They complain the time is inconvenient. A course costing money? fugeddaboudit. The OS is simply not relevant. All too many teachers don't want to learn, can't be bothered, and find absolutely no compelling reason to change their attitudes. Without ridding schools of the ridiculous tenure system, there's just about no way to compel them to do what's best for students. As an example, our district still has some that can't successfully push the MSG button on the phone, enter 4 digits when prompted, and retrieve a voicemail message. Do you seriously think those folks will make an effort to learn something about computing?