How Wheels On the Buses Killed Kenny

Total travel time for you to and from Wheels on the bus: about a number of hours.



"The first day I traveled to school, I was like, do I genuinely wish to do this? " Freeman, eighteen, said. But the ride speedily 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 for that 10 minutes it would take him to get at his local high school.

It once was that students with the longest bus rides were those that have rural addresses. Today, however, a growing 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 classes.

"Oh, I think it's worthwhile, " said Freeman, a senior citizen 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 duration of the trips that students are willing to endure even surprises adults.

"I'll let you know when I felt it -- in that rare occasion when children miss the bus, and Now i am taking them home. I'm pondering, 'Wow, "' said Montgomery Blair High school graduation Principal Phillip Gainous. Long commutes are becoming routine at the Silver Spring secondary school, one of the largest throughout 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 an hour or so. But that has no showing on magnet school commutes, which usually easily stretch longer. Students learn how to make the best of it: One recent morning, a band of Thomas Jefferson freshmen huddled around a little light clamped to a math textbook to study for a test. Another student strummed a guitar. Still others dozed to music from other portable CD players.

Montgomery Blair once offered an associate program that gave far-flung students safe places to keep if the roads were tied up with bad weather or damages. But the program died out from lack of use, Gainous stated. "We don't do that any longer, because the kids are very much accustomed to traveling or waiting for the school, " he said. "They only sleep or do their preparation. "

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

"She had her glue and her glitter. She would pour it from the glue and then pour it in the jar -- I don't think she spilled a single piece of glitter, " she said.

Grace's starting school is Chantilly. Like any traffic-hardened veteran, she separates the woman's commuting time into "good targeted visitors days" and "bad traffic days and nights. "

"Sometimes if traffic is very good, we get there in 8 a. m., " a visit of about a half-hour, Sophistication said. "And sometimes we arrive right before the bell rings" at 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 discover how to do and say, 'Here, support me. ' There's some math whizzes about the bus. It's like study area. "

In Prince William County, 18-year-old Alan Hogan's hour-long bus ride is similar to those of old: No magnet school, he just lives in the rural, western part of this 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 until finally 2004.

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