Choosing a Theme

This is more of a general question which I’m looking for answers based on others’ experiences. We are in the process of working on a redesign for an elementary school’s website. One key aspect of this is that whatever we do has to be supported by potentially non-technical people, so we are trying to use a theme right-out-of-the-box so to speak. And we are also looking for a responsive one.

I’ve looked at twenty-fourteen and while it can be really cool, it seems a lot of edits need to go into it to make it shine. (Another important aspect is that the school works on the concept of pages more than posts.)

So my questions to you wonderfully experienced people out there:

1. Aside from the WordPress themes, are there themes that are always supported and updated? We don’t want to pick a theme and then a year later, it’s no longer compatible with the newest version of WordPress or that if an issue arises, no one can figure it out.

2. What are your general recommendations for a school-type of website? Are certain themes more suited for this than others?

3. Any additional thoughts/comments?

Thanks in advance for your help!