Offhand I'd say it was because the school system struck a deal with a vendor (I'm assuming from your description that they are requiring you to buy the system from them). Did you hear about how the State of California over bought hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of software it didn't need because of such a similarly good deal? My city (stupid center of the universe) is required to buy all our computer systems through a corporation whose only customer is the city, and this corporation bumps up the price for everything two or three times what you can buy in a store under the theory that we get such amazing service from them that it makes up for the overcharge. They lie. I'm very cranky tonight. Sorry.