Need examples of highly customized WP (for edu.)

Howdy! We’re considering using WordPress for a public school district’s main site (department, teacher, and school sites would not be included). Our content will be based on press release / news / event report types of blurbs that will work well with WordPress.

However, we want to give it a very customized look that probably doesn’t look as much like a blog. There might be a couple boxes on the home and category pages that are 250×250 that use the Loop to pull a three most recent press releases or news stories for that category, and the rest is fairly static links to other places on the site.

Technically, this all seems very do-able with WP and I’m excited to dive in. Before I tell our tech dept that we need the resources to start tinkering, I would really like to see some examples that have pushed WordPress in this direction. Keep in mind that I’m with public schools, so “clean” sites would be much appreciated. : )

(I’ve tested a little with WP.com, but I don’t think that site gives me the ability to really tinker with themes and PHP at the level that an actual installation would. I tried to include enough information here, but I’ll answer questions. If this post is out of line or if you honestly think WordPress can’t do this, let me know.)

Thanks!
-Dave