I went to school in Colorado. We too got to stand outside and freeze until the doors opened. But I wasn't a happy camper because it was the first year that the school bussed students from my area, before that students had been housed in town. The principal said he'd never opened the doors until the bell rang for twenty-five years and he wasn't going to change now, even though we were dropped off half an hour before the bell so that the bus could get all the students to their schools. Junior high and high school rode together in the morning. All grades in the afternoon. Before dawn, in the middle of winter, it gets pretty cold in Colorado. I came from a very small mountain community. As you can imagine school wasn't a big priority for many families in my area. It's hard to care about school, when you feel school doesn't care about you.
