How to Fight Lex Luthor Using Only Wheels On the Buses

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



"The first day I visited school, I was like, do I genuinely wish 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 holiday to the science and technology magnet school for your 10 minutes it would take him to get to his local high school.

It used to be that students with the longest bus rides were individuals with rural addresses. Today, however, increasingly more of the longest school bus commutes participate in suburban students, willing to put in the time to be able to attend a prestigious magnet university.

"Oh, I think it's worth every penny, " said Freeman, a older at Thomas Jefferson. "I'm very happy at this school. It's one of those opportunities that comes to maybe a lucky few students. "

Sometimes the size of the trips that students are able to endure even surprises adults.

"I'll show you when I felt it -- in that rare occasion when youngsters miss the bus, and Now i am taking them home. I'm contemplating, 'Wow, "' said Montgomery Blair Senior high school Principal Phillip Gainous. Long commutes are becoming routine at the Silver Spring secondary school, one of the largest in Montgomery and home to magnet programs in communications and science that lure students from across the county.



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

Montgomery Blair once offered a pal program that gave far-flung students safe places to keep 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 nowadays, because the kids are so used to traveling or waiting with the school, " he said. "They merely sleep or do their homework. "

Grace Chung, a 15-year-old Thomas Jefferson sophomore, tries to squeeze in certain study time on the shuttle. But she's seen far a lot more intricate maneuvers: A friend once made an entire poster for spirit week, full of 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 the jar -- I don't think she spilled a single piece of glitter, " she said.

Grace's bottom school is Chantilly. Like any kind of traffic-hardened veteran, she separates the woman commuting time into "good traffic days" and "bad traffic days to weeks. "

"Sometimes if traffic is actually good, we get there at 8 a. m., " an outing of about a half-hour, Grace said. "And sometimes we get there right before the bell rings" on 8: 30. On a recent icy morning that spawned many car accidents and backups, Grace caused it to be to school at 9: 35.

She sees the positives. "You make many friends on the bus. I can take homework that I don't realize how to do and say, 'Here, assist me. ' There's some math whizzes for the bus. It's like study area. "

In Prince William State, 18-year-old Alan Hogan's hour-long bus ride is similar to those of old: No magnetic school, he just lives within the rural, western part of your county. The stars are still bright when Hogan gets within the bus each morning. He attends Stonewall Jackson School, near Manassas. Prince William is developing a high school for western-area individuals, but it won't open till 2004.

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