Several thoughts here:

• systems administrators, working with limited resources (staff hours, server resources) are able to perform their duties only through effective management of expectations;
• you have no idea how many mission-critical applications and IT resources may co-reside on that server, the interruption of which might mean the sysadmin's job, or at least unpleasant after-hours work recovering from any compromise;
• folks trained in an MS environment are often mistrusting of anything open source;
• even a linux admin might be understandably wary of installing code they have not had an opportunity to review for vulnerabilities, or may not have the staff to maintain over time;
• hosting services are cheap these days, as are dyndns.org accounts permitting you to host publically accessible online resources from an otherwise retired machine in a closet on your home network downstream of a residential cable modem;
• so are A records, or even cname's (for those dyndns'd home servers) in a zone file;
• it might be far easier to obtain a link from the dusty site maintained by the school board's staff to your site, hosted on your server;
• engaging the young folks in building and maintaining this site is far more important than having it hosted on the school board's server;
• success breeds trust.

Don't give up on volunteering your energy, efforts to save the world or engaging young people in knowing their own power. Never forget what Margaret Mead had to say about "small group(s) of thoughtful, committed people". Community is built by such.

-- Hugh

* "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead