Total travel time for you to and from Wheels on the bus song for baby: about 4 hours.
"The first day I went to school, I was like, do I really want to do this? " Freeman, 17, said. But the ride rapidly became routine, and now Freeman doesn't hesitate to shoot down the notion of trading the two-hour trip to the science and technology magnet school to the 10 minutes it would take him to access his local high school.
It was once that students with the longest bus rides were individuals with rural addresses. Today, however, an increasing number of of the longest school bus commutes fit in with suburban students, willing to put in the time in order to attend a prestigious magnet classes.
"Oh, I think it's worth every penny, " said Freeman, a older at Thomas Jefferson. "I'm very happy at this school. It's one particular opportunities that comes to maybe a lucky few students. "
Sometimes the length of the trips that students are prepared to endure even surprises adults.
"I'll inform you when I felt it -- upon that rare occasion when little ones miss the bus, and I am just taking them home. I'm imagining, 'Wow, "' said Montgomery Blair School Principal Phillip Gainous. Long commutes have grown routine at the Silver Spring secondary school, one of the largest inside Montgomery and home to magnet programs in communications and scientific disciplines that lure students from through 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, which easily stretch longer. Students be able to make the best of it: One recent morning, a group of Thomas Jefferson freshmen huddled around a tiny light clamped to a math textbook to analyze for a test. Another scholar strummed a guitar. Still others dozed to music off their portable CD players.
Montgomery Blair once offered an associate program that gave far-flung students safe places to settle if the roads were tied up with bad weather or incidents. But the program died out from lack of use, Gainous explained. "We don't do that any more, because the kids are accustomed to traveling or waiting in the school, " he said. "They merely sleep or do their research. "
Grace Chung, a 15-year-old Thomas Jefferson sophomore, tries to squeeze in most study time on the coach. But she's seen far much more intricate maneuvers: A friend once made an entire poster for spirit week, complete with glitter, during the commute to be able to school.
"She had her glue along with her glitter. She would pour it on the glue and then pour it back the jar -- I don't think she spilled a single piece of glitter, " she said.
Grace's bottom school is Chantilly. Like virtually any traffic-hardened veteran, she separates your ex commuting time into "good visitors days" and "bad traffic days to weeks. "
"Sometimes if traffic is actually good, we get there in 8 a. m., " a vacation of about a half-hour, Acceptance said. "And sometimes we reach one's destination right before the bell rings" on 8: 30. On a recent icy morning that spawned a multitude of car accidents and backups, Grace achieved it 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 know how to do and say, 'Here, assist me. ' There's some math whizzes about the bus. It's like study hallway. "
In Prince William Nation, 18-year-old Alan Hogan's hour-long bus ride is similar to those of old: No magnetic school, he just lives from the rural, western part of the actual 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 building 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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