Total travel time to and from Wheels on the bus: about four hours.
"The first day I went along to school, I was like, do I want to do this? " Freeman, 18, said. But the ride swiftly 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 for that 10 minutes it would take him so that his local high school.
It once was that students with the longest bus rides were people that have rural addresses. Today, however, more and more of the longest school bus commutes are part of suburban students, willing to put in the time so that you can attend a prestigious magnet institution.
"Oh, I think it's 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 size of the trips that students are likely to endure even surprises adults.
"I'll tell you when I felt it -- in that rare occasion when little ones miss the bus, and I am taking them home. I'm contemplating, 'Wow, "' said Montgomery Blair School Principal Phillip Gainous. Long commutes have become routine at the Silver Spring secondary school, one of the largest within Montgomery and home to magnet programs in communications and science 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 bearing on magnet school commutes, which in turn easily stretch longer. Students figure out how to make the best of the idea: One recent morning, a gang of Thomas Jefferson freshmen huddled around a small light clamped to a math textbook to analyze for a test. Another pupil 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 settle if the roads were tied up with bad weather or incidents. But the program died out of lack of use, Gainous said. "We don't do that ever again, because the kids are so used to traveling or waiting with the school, " he said. "They only sleep or do their homework. "
Grace Chung, a 15-year-old Thomas Jefferson sophomore, tries to squeeze in most study time on the coach. But she's seen far much more intricate maneuvers: A friend once made a full poster for spirit week, including glitter, during the commute for you to school.
"She had her glue in addition to her glitter. She would pour it on the glue and then pour it last the jar -- I don't think she spilled a single piece of glitter, " she said.
Grace's starting school is Chantilly. Like virtually any traffic-hardened veteran, she separates the woman commuting time into "good targeted traffic days" and "bad traffic days to weeks. "
"Sometimes if traffic is absolutely good, we get there in 8 a. m., " a visit of about a half-hour, Grace said. "And sometimes we make it right before the bell rings" from 8: 30. On a recent icy morning that spawned a multitude of car accidents and backups, Grace managed to get to school at 9: 25.
She sees the positives. "You make a lot of friends on the bus. I can take homework that I don't discover how to do and say, 'Here, aid me. ' There's some math whizzes around the bus. It's like study corridor. "
In Prince William Region, 18-year-old Alan Hogan's hour-long bus ride is a lot more like those of old: No magnets school, he just lives within 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 High school graduation, near Manassas. Prince William is building a high school for western-area pupils, but it won't open until eventually 2004.
Until then, the kids just get used to the journey.
