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



"The first day I traveled to school, I was like, do I want to do this? " Freeman, eighteen, 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 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 people that have rural addresses. Today, however, more and more of the longest school bus commutes belong to suburban students, willing to put in the time so that you can attend a prestigious magnet school.

"Oh, I think it's worth it, " said Freeman, a older at Thomas Jefferson. "I'm very happy at this school. It's one particular 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 tell you when I felt it -- on that rare occasion when kids miss the bus, and I'm taking them home. I'm pondering, 'Wow, "' said Montgomery Blair School Principal Phillip Gainous. Long commutes are becoming routine at the Silver Spring senior high school, one of the largest within Montgomery and home to magnet programs in communications and scientific discipline that lure students from over the county.



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

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

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

"She had her glue and 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 section of glitter, " she said.

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

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

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

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