Re-image Macs in bulk and administer them
Nice thing about the Mac OS is it can be cloned, even while it is running. 

What you want to do is create a bootable disk exactly as you want everything to be. Install applications as desired, create one user (admin) that you will use for maintenance. If you are using Open Directory it's a bit more involved but not much.

With only a dozen or so machines you can do them manually in under a day.

The process I would use is:


Create the working image on what will be your computer. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy it, file mode, to external drive A. Partition drive A to be only a hundred megabytes or so larger than the data (important for next step)
Attach the hardware to your desktop in target disk mode (hold T on startup - it now behaves like an external firewire case. Yes, you need a firewire cable. No, doesn't work with USB.)
Copy (finder drag works fine) computer -> Users -> theirName to Large External Drive B
Go back to Carbon Copy Cloner. Source disk: Drive A. Destination: other computer in target mode. Copy type: Block (you may need to enable this mode in preferences. Wait. Repeat from step 2 as needed.


The first clone-to-external in file mode means that everything is linearized and doesn't include things like /tmp/ and /swap/. The second clone in block mode is  lot faster and doesn't have the write-amplification issues if the destination is an SSD.