High schools can get access to Windows 7 for academic/teaching use involving computer science education, generally for computer science labs, via the MSDN AA Developer program (see
http://msdnaa.net for more information on that). This program also lets school provide copies of software to students for their own computers.
If you can have someone from your school who is in charge of school computer labs (generally a computer science teacher or technology coordinator) get in touch with me at
Alfred.Thompson@microsoft.com I will arrange for a memo of grant so the school gets this program for free. The FIRST Team would be concidered a valid acadeic use under the licence for the program. It includes a whole lot of other development software BTW such as Visual Studio professional.
I’m looking into some additional options especially to see if I can help home schooled or other non-school based teams. More on that when I have it.