Total travel time to and from Wheels on the bus song for baby: about some hours.
"The first day I went along to school, I was like, do I really need to do this? " Freeman, eighteen, said. But the ride quickly became routine, and now Freeman doesn't hesitate to shoot down the notion of trading the two-hour visit to the science and technology magnet school for your 10 minutes it would take him to go to his local high school.
It used to be that students with the longest bus rides were those that have rural addresses. Today, however, more and more of the longest school bus commutes remain in suburban students, willing to put in the time to be able to attend a prestigious magnet institution.
"Oh, I think it's more than worth it, " said Freeman, a mature at Thomas Jefferson. "I'm very happy at this school. It's among those opportunities that comes to maybe a lucky few students. "
Sometimes the duration of the trips that students are able to endure even surprises adults.
"I'll let you know when I felt it -- about that rare occasion when children miss the bus, and I am just taking them home. I'm contemplating, 'Wow, "' said Montgomery Blair High school Principal Phillip Gainous. Long commutes are getting to be routine at the Silver Spring high school, one of the largest inside Montgomery and home to magnet programs in communications and scientific disciplines that lure students from over the county.
School officials across the region strain to keep regular, in-boundary school bus rides under 1 hour. But that has no keeping on magnet school commutes, which in turn easily stretch longer. Students learn to make the best of the item: One recent morning, a group of Thomas Jefferson freshmen huddled around a smaller light clamped to a math textbook to review for a test. Another college 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 settle if the roads were tied up with bad weather or mishaps. But the program died out from lack of use, Gainous claimed. "We don't do that any more, because the kids are very much accustomed to traveling or waiting for the school, " he said. "They just sleep or do their groundwork. "
Grace Chung, a 15-year-old Thomas Jefferson sophomore, tries to squeeze using some study time on the coach. But she's seen far a lot more intricate maneuvers: A friend once made a total poster for spirit week, including glitter, during the commute in order to school.
"She had her glue and also her glitter. She would pour it on the glue and then pour it last the jar -- I don't think she spilled a single little bit of glitter, " she said.
Grace's basic school is Chantilly. Like just about any traffic-hardened veteran, she separates your ex commuting time into "good visitors days" and "bad traffic times. "
"Sometimes if traffic is basically good, we get there on 8 a. m., " vacation of about a half-hour, Sophistication said. "And sometimes we arrive right before the bell rings" in 8: 30. On a recent icy morning that spawned a multitude of car accidents and backups, Grace made it to school at 9: 25.
She sees the positives. "You make a great deal of friends on the bus. I can take homework that I don't learn how to do and say, 'Here, support me. ' There's some math whizzes about the bus. It's like study lounge. "
In Prince William County, 18-year-old Alan Hogan's hour-long bus ride is more like those of old: No magnet school, he just lives within the rural, western part of the particular 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 creating a high school for western-area students, but it won't open until finally 2004.
Until then, the kids just get accustomed to the journey.
