Total travel time and energy to and from Wheels on the bus: about four hours.
"The first day I attended school, I was like, do I genuinely wish to do this? " Freeman, eighteen, said. But the ride rapidly became routine, and now Freeman doesn't hesitate to shoot down the notion of trading the two-hour day at the science and technology magnet school to the 10 minutes it would take him to get to his local high school.
It was once that students with the longest bus rides were those with rural addresses. Today, however, a lot more of the longest school bus commutes remain in suburban students, willing to put in the time as a way to attend a prestigious magnet classes.
"Oh, I think it's worth the cost, " said Freeman, a elderly at Thomas Jefferson. "I'm very happy at this school. It's a type of opportunities that comes to maybe a lucky few students. "
Sometimes the size of the trips that students are prepared to endure even surprises adults.
"I'll show you when I felt it -- about that rare occasion when young children miss the bus, and I'm taking them home. I'm pondering, 'Wow, "' said Montgomery Blair Senior high school Principal Phillip Gainous. Long commutes have grown routine at the Silver Spring senior high school, one of the largest in Montgomery and home to magnet programs in communications and scientific discipline that lure students from throughout the county.
School officials across the region strain to keep regular, in-boundary school bus rides under 1 hour. But that has no displaying on magnet school commutes, that easily stretch longer. Students discover how to make the best of this: One recent morning, a number of Thomas Jefferson freshmen huddled around a smaller light clamped to a math textbook to analyze for a test. Another student strummed a guitar. Still others dozed to music using their portable CD players.
Montgomery Blair once offered a buddy program that gave far-flung students safe places to be if the roads were tied up with bad weather or injuries. But the program died from lack of use, Gainous stated. "We don't do that ever again, because the kids are accustomed to traveling or waiting in the school, " he said. "They simply sleep or do their homework. "
Grace Chung, a 15-year-old Thomas Jefferson sophomore, tries to squeeze using some study time on the tour bus. But she's seen far more intricate maneuvers: A friend once made a total poster for spirit week, complete with glitter, during the commute to school.
"She had her glue and her glitter. She would pour it from the glue and then pour it back the jar -- I don't think she spilled a single piece of glitter, " she said.
Grace's starting school is Chantilly. Like almost any traffic-hardened veteran, she separates the woman commuting time into "good traffic days" and "bad traffic days and nights. "
"Sometimes if traffic is absolutely good, we get there on 8 a. m., " a visit of about a half-hour, Grace said. "And sometimes we make it happen right before the bell rings" with 8: 30. On a recent icy morning that spawned many car accidents and backups, Grace made it to school at 9: 35.
She sees the positives. "You make plenty of friends on the bus. I can take homework that I don't discover how to do and say, 'Here, guide me. ' There's some math whizzes around the bus. It's like study area. "
In Prince William Region, 18-year-old Alan Hogan's hour-long bus ride is more like those of old: No magnet school, he just lives in the rural, western part of the county. The stars are still bright when Hogan gets about the bus each morning. He attends Stonewall Jackson Senior high school, near Manassas. Prince William is developing a high school for western-area college students, but it won't open right up until 2004.
Until then, the kids just get accustomed to the journey.
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