Greatest Wheels on the Bus Track pertaining to Little ones in order to perform to understand British.

Total travel time to and from Wheels on the bus go round and round: about some hours.



"The first day I attended school, I was like, do I really want to do this? " Freeman, 20, said. But the ride speedily became routine, and now Freeman doesn't hesitate to shoot down the notion of trading the two-hour visit to the science and technology magnet school with the 10 minutes it would take him to access his local high school.

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

"Oh, I think it's worth every penny, " said Freeman, a senior citizen 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 willing to endure even surprises adults.

"I'll explain when I felt it -- with that rare occasion when kids miss the bus, and I'm taking them home. I'm considering, 'Wow, "' said Montgomery Blair Senior high school Principal Phillip Gainous. Long commutes have grown to be routine at the Silver Spring high school, one of the largest with Montgomery and home to magnet programs in communications and technology that lure students from throughout the county.



School officials across the region strain to keep regular, in-boundary school bus rides under 1 hour. But that has no bearing on magnet school commutes, which usually easily stretch longer. Students learn to make the best of this: One recent morning, a gang of Thomas Jefferson freshmen huddled around a small light clamped to a math textbook to review for a test. Another student strummed a guitar. Still others dozed to music off their portable CD players.

Montgomery Blair once offered a pal program that gave far-flung students safe places to remain if the roads were tied up with bad weather or incidents. But the program died out from lack of use, Gainous said. "We don't do that anymore, because the kids are accustomed to traveling or waiting for the school, " he said. "They only sleep or do their study. "

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

"She had her glue as well as her glitter. She would pour it out on the glue and then pour it back in the jar -- I don't think she spilled a single bit of glitter, " she said.

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

"Sometimes if traffic is absolutely good, we get there in 8 a. m., " vacation of about a half-hour, Grace said. "And sometimes we arrive right before the bell rings" on 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 plenty of friends on the bus. I can take homework that I don't learn how to do and say, 'Here, support me. ' There's some math whizzes within the bus. It's like study hall. "

In Prince William Nation, 18-year-old Alan Hogan's hour-long bus ride is more like those of old: No magnetic school, he just lives from the rural, western part of the particular county. The stars are still bright when Hogan gets for the bus each morning. He attends Stonewall Jackson Senior high school, near Manassas. Prince William is building a high school for western-area students, but it won't open until eventually 2004.

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