Upgrading at an educational institution

Okay, I'm in a bit of a dilemma and would like to see what people say about this.

The area for the university that I work for has only 3 MACs. We would like to upgrade to Lion and are currently running Snow Leopard. Each area that has MACs must upgrade separately since the IT department refuses to offer support for them (and if they did, this question would be moot; I digress).

Now, per Apple's policy, an educational institution cannot just go to the MAC Store, pay for Lion, download it and then use that one copy to upgrade all their MACs since we have multiple users.This means that there is also no unique Apple ID for the computers since they are for our entire patron base and not for personal use. However because we only have 3 MACS buying the bulk license is unfeasible.

In buying Lion I also cannot just use a credit card to buy it since I have to go through Accounts Payable and they subtract the amount out of our account when they receive the paper bill. Then again with this though I run into the fact that the computers are unable to have a unique Apple ID since anyone needs to be able to get onto the MACs using their own personal IDs. I know that Apple has a flash drive that has Lion on it so we could purchase that. However in doing so I would need to know that in buying the flash drive once I can put it on all the computers and not have issue with Apple's educational institution policy for OS upgrades.

So here are my options:

1. Go through the MAC Store and pay for a separate download of Lion for each computer. Total: $90.00. Works only if I don't need to use a unique Apple ID for each computer and can use a PO system of payment. Can I do the PO system of payment with MAC Store for each computer and use my ID only?

2. Get the flash drive. Total: $69.00 or $207.00 depending on if I have to buy one for each individual computer or can use the one for all of them (as long as this latter decision does not conflict with Apple's policy for educational institutions). Does anyone know?

3. Any idea that makes better sense or is even crazier but works....

Any guidance would be appreciated!