RE: High School Project, which sim would be best?
You should also consider FMS ... it is not as good as the other sims but you can download it for free. This may be a good place to start with a limited budget and a bunch of school kids. Another thing to consider is that most of the "high end" sims like G2, G3, AFP and AFP Deluxe will require a decent graphics card that the school computers will not likely have. So you are probably talking about upgrading the computer(s) in addition to purchasing the sims. FMS will run on just about any graphics card.
Good luck! Sounds like a fun project to me.
Carl