[hoag]

You should really talk to the IT people at your school. If they really won't change any of your settings, ask if you can borrow a loaner laptop with modified settings only for robotics. (If they have them).

My school has a laptop program that started back in the late 90's. It's a voluntary program (but like 90% of the school participates). Everyone has IBM thinkpads. In 10th grade, you can either buy one or make payments on it. Then when you graduate, it's yours to keep.
As for security, everyone is an administrator on their local accounts. I have a school account on the domain that I can log on to with my laptop, or any of the macs or pcs.
If your school has classroom PC's or labs, ask if you can get a robotics account for one of those. My team has our own login just for our robotics stuff.
As for punishment issues that have been brought up, my school is very strict like most are. Students get suspended for abusing the computers often. One student was even expelled last year.

Schools need to be strict. There's a lot of important information that travels across the network. If you have a computer that is connected to the network that may harm or compromise other machines, things could get bad. In my school, all of the security cameras are digital. Our fuel cell uses the network for monitoring information. Heck, even the locks for every door are controlled on the network. These things are vital to building operation; administrators don't want kids to even think about messing with them.
Many times we all get mad at our schools for being so strict, but they need to protect all of their students and staff.

Otherwise, it's great to have a laptop for robot programming. I've heard stories of my team's rookie years involving constant unplugging and moving a desktop computer around the lab. (Ouch) Talk to administrators and tech guys about getting an account on a local machine, or another machine just for programming.