Why You'll Never Succeed at Wheels On the Buses

Total travel time to and from Wheels on the bus: about four hours.



"The first day I attended 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 holiday to the science and technology magnet school to the 10 minutes it would take him to go to his local high school.

It was previously that students with the longest bus rides were include those with rural addresses. Today, however, more and more of the longest school bus commutes remain in suburban students, willing to put in the time in order to attend a prestigious magnet school.

"Oh, I think it's more than worth it, " 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 duration of the trips that students are likely to endure even surprises adults.

"I'll let you know when I felt it -- in that rare occasion when children miss the bus, and I'm taking them home. I'm imagining, 'Wow, "' said Montgomery Blair Senior high school Principal Phillip Gainous. Long commutes are becoming routine at the Silver Spring high school graduation, one of the largest within 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 bearing on magnet school commutes, which easily stretch longer. Students be able to make the best of that: One recent morning, a band of Thomas Jefferson freshmen huddled around a smallish light clamped to a math textbook to analyze for a test. Another student 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 keep if the roads were tied up with bad weather or injuries. But the program died out from lack of use, Gainous said. "We don't do that any longer, because the kids are so used to traveling or waiting for the school, " he said. "They just sleep or do their preparation. "

Grace Chung, a 15-year-old Thomas Jefferson sophomore, tries to squeeze using some study time on the bus. But she's seen far more intricate maneuvers: A friend once made a total poster for spirit week, full of glitter, during the commute in order to school.

"She had her glue in addition to her glitter. She would pour it out on the glue and then pour it last the jar -- I don't think she spilled a single section of glitter, " she said.

Grace's basic school is Chantilly. Like any kind of traffic-hardened veteran, she separates your ex commuting time into "good targeted traffic days" and "bad traffic days and nights. "

"Sometimes if traffic is basically good, we get there on 8 a. m., " a trip of about a half-hour, Sophistication said. "And sometimes we make it right before the bell rings" in 8: 30. On a recent icy morning that spawned a large number of car accidents and backups, Grace got to school at 9: 30.

She sees the positives. "You make a lot of friends on the bus. I can take homework that I don't understand how to do and say, 'Here, guide 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 field school, he just lives in the rural, western part of the county. The stars are still bright when Hogan gets around the bus each morning. He attends Stonewall Jackson High school graduation, near Manassas. Prince William is constructing a high school for western-area learners, but it won't open until 2004.

Until then, the kids just get accustomed to the journey.