Thứ Tư, 26 tháng 8, 2015
Total travel the perfect time to and from Wheels on the bus go round and round: about 4 hours.
"The first day I went along to school, I was like, do I really want to do this? " Freeman, 17, said. But the ride speedily 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 so that his local high school.
It once was that students with the longest bus rides were include those with rural addresses. Today, however, an increasing number of 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 more than worth it, " 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 along the trips that students are able to endure even surprises adults.
"I'll tell you when I felt it -- in that rare occasion when youngsters miss the bus, and I am taking them home. I'm pondering, 'Wow, "' said Montgomery Blair High school Principal Phillip Gainous. Long commutes have grown to be routine at the Silver Spring secondary school, one of the largest inside Montgomery and home to magnet programs in communications and science that lure students from throughout the county.
School officials across the region strain to keep regular, in-boundary school bus rides under an 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 it: One recent morning, a band of Thomas Jefferson freshmen huddled around a smallish light clamped to a math textbook to check for a test. Another scholar 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 accidents. But the program died from lack of use, Gainous explained. "We don't do that nowadays, because the kids are accustomed to traveling or waiting with the school, " he said. "They only sleep or do their research. "
Grace Chung, a 15-year-old Thomas Jefferson sophomore, tries to squeeze in a few study time on the shuttle bus. But she's seen far much more intricate maneuvers: A friend once made a whole poster for spirit week, including glitter, during the commute to help school.
"She had her glue and also her glitter. She would pour it on the glue and then pour it in the jar -- I don't think she spilled a single section of glitter, " she said.
Grace's starting school is Chantilly. Like virtually any traffic-hardened veteran, she separates the woman commuting time into "good visitors days" and "bad traffic nights. "
"Sometimes if traffic is really good, we get there in 8 a. m., " vacation of about a half-hour, Leeway said. "And sometimes we reach one's destination right before the bell rings" in 8: 30. On a recent icy morning that spawned dozens of car accidents and backups, Grace managed to get to school at 9: 35.
She sees the positives. "You make a lot of friends on the bus. I can take homework that I don't understand how to do and say, 'Here, aid me. ' There's some math whizzes about the bus. It's like study lounge. "
In Prince William Nation, 18-year-old Alan Hogan's hour-long bus ride is a lot more like those of old: No magnetic field school, he just lives inside rural, western part of the particular county. The stars are still bright when Hogan gets around the bus each morning. He attends Stonewall Jackson Secondary school, near Manassas. Prince William is creating a high school for western-area learners, but it won't open until finally 2004.
Until then, the kids just become accustomed to the journey.
