Save Your Marriage Using Only Wheels On the Buses

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



"The first day I traveled to school, I was like, do I genuinely wish to do this? " Freeman, 20, said. But the ride easily 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 the 10 minutes it would take him to access his local high school.

It used to be 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 fit in with suburban students, willing to put in the time to be able to attend a prestigious magnet institution.

"Oh, I think it's worth every penny, " said Freeman, a elderly 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 capacity of the trips that students are likely to endure even surprises adults.

"I'll show you when I felt it -- about that rare occasion when kids miss the bus, and I am taking them home. I'm pondering, 'Wow, "' said Montgomery Blair High school graduation Principal Phillip Gainous. Long commutes are getting to be routine at the Silver Spring school, one of the largest inside Montgomery and home to magnet programs in communications and research that lure students from over the county.



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

Montgomery Blair once offered somebody program that gave far-flung students safe places to be if the roads were tied up with bad weather or damages. 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 at the school, " he said. "They merely sleep or do their study. "

Grace Chung, a 15-year-old Thomas Jefferson sophomore, tries to squeeze in certain study time on the bus. But she's seen far additional intricate maneuvers: A friend once made a total poster for spirit week, full of glitter, during the commute to school.

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

Grace's bottom school is Chantilly. Like almost 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 very good, we get there with 8 a. m., " vacation of about a half-hour, Acceptance said. "And sometimes we reach one's destination right before the bell rings" at 8: 30. On a recent icy morning that spawned dozens of car accidents and backups, Grace achieved it to school at 9: thirty.

She sees the positives. "You make many 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 for the bus. It's like study hall. "

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

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