Total travel the perfect time to and from Wheels on the bus: about 4 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 swiftly became routine, and now Freeman doesn't hesitate to shoot down the notion of trading the two-hour vacation to the science and technology magnet school for your 10 minutes it would take him to go to his local high school.
It was previously that students with the longest bus rides were those with rural addresses. Today, however, increasingly more of the longest school bus commutes fit in with suburban students, willing to put in the time so as to attend a prestigious magnet school.
"Oh, I think it's worth it, " said Freeman, a senior at Thomas Jefferson. "I'm very happy at this school. It's one of those opportunities that comes to maybe a lucky few students. "
Sometimes the capacity of the trips that students are able to endure even surprises adults.
"I'll inform you when I felt it -- on that rare occasion when children miss the bus, and Now i am taking them home. I'm considering, 'Wow, "' said Montgomery Blair School Principal Phillip Gainous. Long commutes have grown routine at the Silver Spring school, one of the largest in Montgomery and home to magnet programs in communications and science that lure students from throughout the county.
School officials across the region strain to keep regular, in-boundary school bus rides under an hour or so. But that has no having on magnet school commutes, that easily stretch longer. Students learn how to make the best of the item: One recent morning, a number of Thomas Jefferson freshmen huddled around a little light clamped to a math textbook to examine for a test. Another pupil strummed a guitar. Still others dozed to music using their portable CD players.
Montgomery Blair once offered a friend program that gave far-flung students safe places to stay if the roads were tied up with bad weather or damages. But the program died out of lack of use, Gainous explained. "We don't do that ever again, because the kids are so used to traveling or waiting with the school, " he said. "They simply just sleep or do their research. "
Grace Chung, a 15-year-old Thomas Jefferson sophomore, tries to squeeze in some study time on the bus. But she's seen far a lot more intricate maneuvers: A friend once made a full poster for spirit week, full of glitter, during the commute to school.
"She had her glue as well as her glitter. She would pour it out on the glue and then pour it in the jar -- I don't think she spilled a single bit of glitter, " she said.
Grace's starting school is Chantilly. Like just about any traffic-hardened veteran, she separates your ex commuting time into "good traffic days" and "bad traffic times. "
"Sometimes if traffic is actually good, we get there on 8 a. m., " an outing of about a half-hour, Elegance said. "And sometimes we make it happen right before the bell rings" at 8: 30. On a recent icy morning that spawned many car accidents and backups, Grace managed to get to school at 9: 30.
She sees the positives. "You make lots of friends on the bus. I can take homework that I don't discover how to do and say, 'Here, assist me. ' There's some math whizzes within the bus. It's like study hallway. "
In Prince William Region, 18-year-old Alan Hogan's hour-long bus ride is similar to those of old: No magnet school, he just lives from the rural, western part of your county. The stars are still bright when Hogan gets for the bus each morning. He attends Stonewall Jackson High school graduation, near Manassas. Prince William is constructing a high school for western-area individuals, but it won't open until eventually 2004.
Until then, the kids just get accustomed to the journey.









