I ran into the opposite of this when my oldest kid was looking at middle schools (Denver Public Schools are more or less open enrollment). The Denver School of Science and Technology did not use free software, and in fact ran exclusively on Windows. I found this odd, because free software would allow students to actually run things (DNS, web servers, wireless access, routers) as opposed to becoming "power users" ignorant of what sacred Microsoft black boxes do. Between that, a fairly strict dress code, and the promise of mandatory homework, we rejected DSST middle school.