Total travel time for it to and from Wheels on the bus go round and round: about a number of hours.
"The first day I went along to school, I was like, do I want to do this? " Freeman, 18, said. But the ride speedily became routine, and now Freeman doesn't hesitate to shoot down the notion of trading the two-hour day at 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 include those with rural addresses. Today, however, an increasing number of of the longest school bus commutes are part of suburban students, willing to put in the time so as to attend a prestigious magnet institution.
"Oh, I think it's worthwhile, " said Freeman, a senior at Thomas Jefferson. "I'm very happy at this school. It's among those opportunities that comes to maybe a lucky few students. "
Sometimes along the trips that students are prepared to endure even surprises adults.
"I'll let you know when I felt it -- with that rare occasion when little ones miss the bus, and Now i am taking them home. I'm contemplating, 'Wow, "' said Montgomery Blair High school graduation Principal Phillip Gainous. Long commutes are getting to be routine at the Silver Spring high school graduation, one of the largest inside Montgomery and home to magnet programs in communications and technology that lure students from along the county.
School officials across the region strain to keep regular, in-boundary school bus rides under one hour. But that has no having on magnet school commutes, which in turn easily stretch longer. Students learn to make the best of this: One recent morning, a band 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 company portable CD players.
Montgomery Blair once offered a pal program that gave far-flung students safe places to settle if the roads were tied up with bad weather or accidents. But the program died from lack of use, Gainous mentioned. "We don't do that nowadays, because the kids are very much accustomed to traveling or waiting at the school, " he said. "They 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 total poster for spirit week, detailed with glitter, during the commute to help school.
"She had her glue in addition to her glitter. She would pour it on the glue and then pour it in the jar -- I don't think she spilled a single little bit of glitter, " she said.
Grace's starting school is Chantilly. Like almost any traffic-hardened veteran, she separates the woman's commuting time into "good targeted traffic days" and "bad traffic days and nights. "
"Sometimes if traffic is absolutely good, we get there with 8 a. m., " an outing of about a half-hour, Leeway said. "And sometimes we arrive right before the bell rings" from 8: 30. On a recent icy morning that spawned a large number of car accidents and backups, Grace got to school at 9: 35.
She sees the positives. "You make a great deal of friends on the bus. I can take homework that I don't understand how to do and say, 'Here, support me. ' There's some math whizzes around the bus. It's like study hall. "
In Prince William Local, 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 your county. The stars are still bright when Hogan gets around the bus each morning. He attends Stonewall Jackson Senior high school, near Manassas. Prince William is constructing a high school for western-area pupils, but it won't open till 2004.
Until then, the kids just get used to the journey.
