[russell]

Call me simplistic but if I were the school district I would the most logical approach to the situation would be to charge a fee to "reset" a laptop. You arent furthering anyones education (face it, you can learn all the similes you want in english, but advanced simile identification is worthless compared to technical skills) by not allowing them to mess around on the computer. If they are gonna blow the cash on a laptop for each student they might as well let the students get as much benefit as possible from them.

Now sitting here several thousand miles away (it might be different if it were actually happening to me) I would like to say that if the IT people wont do it for me, il dang well do it myself. The school district didnt spend the taxpayers money on a computer so that they could spend more of the money to pay somebody to prevent me from gaining the maximum benifit from the laptop. On the other hand dont mess up whats on there already. Dont format the hard drive, either swap it out with one of your own, or find a way to use an external drive of some sort. If I asked a lawyer they might tell me that it "is inpermissible" or some nonsense, but this isnt about what lawyers think its about the simple fact that you are going to give back a computer just as functional as the one they gave to you. If you screw it up youd better take responsibility though (as in you personally, not the club/team/etc).