My high school took out our soda machines because they were “unhealthy,” and replaced them with Vitamin Water and Minute Maid juice (eg, sugar water). In fairness, I’d never expect a district administrator to be a “reasonable person.”
Vitamin water does have about half as much sugar as soda so that's a bit of an improvement.
Given the brands you mention I bet they have a contract with Coca-Cola or those machines produce a nontrivial amount of profit such that the machines removal is disincentivized.
What do you mean it didn’t matter much? The goal was to get this to make news so that people would talk about it. And I’d say they were pretty successful with that.