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Total travel time to and from Wheels on the bus: about 4 hours.



"The first day I attended school, I was like, do I genuinely wish to do this? " Freeman, 18, said. But the ride quickly became routine, and now Freeman doesn't hesitate to shoot down the notion of trading the two-hour vacation to the science and technology magnet school for 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 with 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 to be able to attend a prestigious magnet classes.

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

Sometimes the duration of the trips that students are prepared to endure even surprises adults.

"I'll show you when I felt it -- about that rare occasion when children miss the bus, and Now i am taking them home. I'm thinking, 'Wow, "' said Montgomery Blair School Principal Phillip Gainous. Long commutes are becoming routine at the Silver Spring school, one of the largest in 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. But that has no keeping on magnet school commutes, which in turn easily stretch longer. Students learn to make the best of the item: One recent morning, a band of Thomas Jefferson freshmen huddled around a tiny light clamped to a math textbook to analyze for a test. Another scholar strummed a guitar. Still others dozed to music using their company portable CD players.

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

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 far more intricate maneuvers: A friend once made a whole poster for spirit week, full of glitter, during the commute to be able to school.

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

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

"Sometimes if traffic is really good, we get there at 8 a. m., " an outing of about a half-hour, Sophistication said. "And sometimes we reach one's destination right before the bell rings" in 8: 30. On a recent icy morning that spawned many car accidents and backups, Grace made it to school at 9: 35.

She sees the positives. "You make a great deal 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 about the bus. It's like study hall. "

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

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