create organic groups programmatically for a school site

Hi Dojo experts:

Relatively new to drupal ( about 2 months plus ) but rapidly coming upto speed with all aspects.

I am attempting to create a site with organic groups that could be created by some or all users -

The site is targeted towards a middle school/high school audience and only certain users ( e.g. teachers ) should be able to create those groups ( these are really class groups ).

Users should be able to go to a custom form ( or UI ) to create an organic group and fill out specific attributes. This would require more than the ones allowed in the base og module - e.g. class type ( sociology, maths, english etc), grade level: 7th,8th,9th etc and so on.

I am sure this has come up before so I am hopeful that there are quick ways of doing this.
What are the best approaches for doing this. How would I go about it - Some that I am investigating are:
a. create a custom module that layers above the og node and calls og apis ( how would I do this - which apis ? )
b. create a form ( webform ) that invokes og node apis ( same question as a above - which apis and how ).

I have read how-tos about invoking node apis programmatically but I am still confused about how to do this for og and if I need to custom create attributes in og, how to go about it.

Any helps/ directions / pointers would be greatly appreciated. If I should cross-post this in other drupal groups, please let me know as well.