Total travel time and energy to and from Wheels on the bus go round and round: about several hours.
"The first day I went along to school, I was like, do I want to do this? " Freeman, 20, 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 your 10 minutes it would take him to get at his local high school.
It was previously that students with the longest bus rides were those that have rural addresses. Today, however, increasingly more of the longest school bus commutes remain in suburban students, willing to put in the time in order to attend a prestigious magnet university.
"Oh, I think it's worth every penny, " said Freeman, a senior at Thomas Jefferson. "I'm very happy at this school. It's one particular opportunities that comes to maybe a lucky few students. "
Sometimes along the trips that students are able to endure even surprises adults.
"I'll let you know when I felt it -- on that rare occasion when kids miss the bus, and I am just taking them home. I'm imagining, 'Wow, "' said Montgomery Blair High school graduation Principal Phillip Gainous. Long commutes are getting to be routine at the Silver Spring secondary school, one of the largest inside Montgomery and home to magnet programs in communications and scientific discipline that lure students from through 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 keeping on magnet school commutes, which usually easily stretch longer. Students be able to make the best of this: One recent morning, a gang of Thomas Jefferson freshmen huddled around a tiny light clamped to a math textbook to check for a test. Another student strummed a guitar. Still others dozed to music from their portable CD players.
Montgomery Blair once offered somebody program that gave far-flung students safe places to stay if the roads were tied up with bad weather or accidents. But the program died out from lack of use, Gainous claimed. "We don't do that nowadays, because the kids are accustomed to traveling or waiting for the school, " he said. "They merely sleep or do their homework. "
Grace Chung, a 15-year-old Thomas Jefferson sophomore, tries to squeeze in most study time on the shuttle bus. But she's seen far much more intricate maneuvers: A friend once made an entire poster for spirit week, including glitter, during the commute to school.
"She had her glue in addition to her glitter. She would pour it from the glue and then pour it the government financial aid the jar -- I don't think she spilled a single little bit of glitter, " she said.
Grace's foundation school is Chantilly. Like almost any traffic-hardened veteran, she separates the woman's commuting time into "good visitors days" and "bad traffic days. "
"Sometimes if traffic is absolutely good, we get there with 8 a. m., " vacation of about a half-hour, Grace said. "And sometimes we reach one's destination right before the bell rings" on 8: 30. On a recent icy morning that spawned a large number of car accidents and backups, Grace managed to get to school at 9: 30.
She sees the positives. "You make a great deal of friends on the bus. I can take homework that I don't realize how to do and say, 'Here, guide me. ' There's some math whizzes around the bus. It's like study corridor. "
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 from 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 Secondary school, near Manassas. Prince William is creating a high school for western-area pupils, but it won't open till 2004.
Until then, the kids just get accustomed to the journey.
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