Total travel time and energy to and from Wheels on the bus song for baby: about four hours.
"The first day I went along to school, I was like, do I want to do this? " Freeman, 17, said. But the ride quickly became routine, and now Freeman doesn't hesitate to shoot down the notion of trading the two-hour holiday to the science and technology magnet school for that 10 minutes it would take him to go to his local high school.
It had been 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 to be able to attend a prestigious magnet school.
"Oh, I think it's worth the cost, " said Freeman, a older 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 tell you when I felt it -- in that rare occasion when youngsters miss the bus, and Now i'm taking them home. I'm imagining, '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 with Montgomery and home to magnet programs in communications and research that lure students from throughout the county.
School officials across the region strain to keep regular, in-boundary school bus rides under a couple of hours. But that has no displaying on magnet school commutes, that easily stretch longer. Students learn how to make the best of the item: One recent morning, a gang of Thomas Jefferson freshmen huddled around a smaller light clamped to a math textbook to study for a test. Another college student strummed a guitar. Still others dozed to music off their portable CD players.
Montgomery Blair once offered a friend program that gave far-flung students safe places to keep if the roads were tied up with bad weather or accidents. But the program died out of lack of use, Gainous explained. "We don't do that ever again, because the kids are accustomed to traveling or waiting on the school, " he said. "They simply 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 a lot more intricate maneuvers: A friend once made a full poster for spirit week, complete with glitter, during the commute to be able to school.
"She had her glue and also her glitter. She would pour it out on the glue and then pour it the government financial aid the jar -- I don't think she spilled a single piece of glitter, " she said.
Grace's base school is Chantilly. Like almost any traffic-hardened veteran, she separates the woman commuting time into "good targeted visitors days" and "bad traffic times. "
"Sometimes if traffic is absolutely good, we get there on 8 a. m., " vacation of about a half-hour, Acceptance said. "And sometimes we reach one's destination right before the bell rings" in 8: 30. On a recent icy morning that spawned dozens of car accidents and backups, Grace got to school at 9: thirty.
She sees the positives. "You make many friends on the bus. I can take homework that I don't discover how to do and say, 'Here, help me. ' There's some math whizzes on the bus. It's like study hallway. "
In Prince William County, 18-year-old Alan Hogan's hour-long bus ride is more like those of old: No magnetic school, he just lives inside rural, western part of the actual county. The stars are still bright when Hogan gets on the bus each morning. He attends Stonewall Jackson High school graduation, near Manassas. Prince William is building a high school for western-area individuals, but it won't open right up until 2004.
Until then, the kids just get accustomed to the journey.
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