Truth, sadly. It's more "parents these days".
It's more than that.
Our students wear uniforms, and khaki shorts/pants and maroon knit polos are only so warm. Since all layers would have to go on top of the uniform in order to comply, you're talking many, many layers of clothes in order to get kids waiting in 18'degree temps (not including the wind chill factor) for the buses. Then once they get to,school, where do all those layers get stored? It's not like we have cubbies for the kids or anything. And that's figuring in that parents even have sufficient cold weather gear for children down here in good ol' southeast Louisiana.
But the other main factor is school pipes. We don't build our buildings to the specifications that I'm sure y'all do in terms of extreme cold temps. Especially considering our much older school buildings, pipes are in danger of bursting due to the extreme temp fluctuations. In fact, pipes busted at two of our elementary schools and the highschool. School was supposed to resume today, but was pushed back day. Parents grumbled, but they would've grumbled even more after having to figure out what to do with kids once buses were turned round and those in carpool were told to go home. At least parents had 36 hours warning instead of 5-10 minutes in regard to making accommodations for care for their kids.
As it is, we had all our pipes rewrapped last year, and here I sit in my house with the water shut off because a copper part of one pipe has a 2 inch crack in it and turned my backyard into an iceskating rink.
I spent my night breaking ice out of my horses water buckets and our trough.
Laugh, but there's no way for us to truly be prepared down here for such temps. Sunday it was 75 degrees. Monday it was 30 (the high).