I am unfortunately, not very familiar with that area at all... However if we can figure out what kinda of options are available it could better help us choose which one(s) we wish to go with...
Is this class an ellective class or is the entire student body required to take it? I doubt they(school) would let us, but the most effective way to get a boost in funds for the tank would be to have the kids themselves actually help us. A candy bar or sub fund raiser should bring in a good amount of money to finish it off, I am very familiar with both these forms of fundraisers... We can ask the teacher/principle if this would be an option(though as I stated earlier most school's limit the amount of fundraisers, so they don't "burden" the surronding area with multiple fund raisiers) still doens't hurt to ask though...
Another option would be to get a list of "charitable" organizations in that area, churches ETC and see if we can tag along with and form of meal function with them for a split of the proceeds to help the class tank. (If you have a church or organization in mind please share, however we can obtain a list from the IRS in the area on their site)
I can check with the MOOSE and see if they would be willing to do a similiar function as well by supplying the location and kitchen and if we could keep the proceeds or split it with them as well.
The garage sale idea is a good one, especially if we can get a good location... there are plenty of options we just need to narrow our options...
Carshows, car washes, bake offs... It ususally helps to have the fundraiser coincide with what we do, but we are kinda limited there
If you want to sit down at the next meeting or so we could really draw up a nice plan for this.... I think that the fundraisers we do in the area should be placed in a holding for ALL of the tanks and not specifically one tank... also a percentage of the proceeds needs to be put aside for maintenance and upkeep on all of the tanks... so instead of having a bucket of salt at every class, we can just keep a few at the care providers house for all the surronding schools. We can unify our salt selection this way and buy in bulk to save even more...
It would not be a bad idea to draw up a standard stocking guide and equipment list... so each tank is not that far from identical to each other... this would lower maintenance and make things easier to replace... if we have the stocked funds we can buy spare parts for emergency purposes and those parts will work on more than 1 tank(ie if we use the same pump on all tanks 1 impellar replacement will cover them all in case of emerency).
We should look towards low impact at first, lets just focus on getting these tanks in the rooms at first, we can stock and upgrade them later... FOWLR I think is a great starting place... and we can gear it for coral down the road... we dont need to try to run sps in these things right away. if we choose coral, we can do some beginners with little requirements. The kids will still get the same impact but at a substaintial decrease in price and maintenance.