One Drupal site or several? If several, one database or multiple databases?
Recommendation was for single site.
Loading initial content
Content exists as HTML pages presently.
Bob B. is checking into having his students write a script or scripts to strip and upload content (I've thought about this and it's not going to be a good fit for the course)
Dave mentioned he has some students looking for an open source project, and that might be a better fit