Thứ Ba, 1 tháng 9, 2015
Total travel time to and from Wheels on the bus go round and round: about four hours.
"The first day I went along to school, I was like, do I actually want to do this? " Freeman, 16, said. But the ride rapidly 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 with the 10 minutes it would take him to go to 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 are part of suburban students, willing to put in the time so that you can attend a prestigious magnet classes.
"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 capacity of the trips that students are prepared to endure even surprises adults.
"I'll inform you when I felt it -- in that rare occasion when youngsters miss the bus, and I am taking them home. I'm thinking, 'Wow, "' said Montgomery Blair High school Principal Phillip Gainous. Long commutes are getting to be routine at the Silver Spring high school, one of the largest inside 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 or so. But that has no displaying on magnet school commutes, which easily stretch longer. Students be able to make the best of it: One recent morning, a gang of Thomas Jefferson freshmen huddled around a smallish light clamped to a math textbook to examine for a test. Another university student strummed a guitar. Still others dozed to music using their company portable CD players.
Montgomery Blair once offered an associate program that gave far-flung students safe places to stay if the roads were tied up with bad weather or damages. But the program died out of lack of use, Gainous claimed. "We don't do that any more, because the kids are accustomed to traveling or waiting for the school, " he said. "They only sleep or do their preparation. "
Grace Chung, a 15-year-old Thomas Jefferson sophomore, tries to squeeze in most study time on the bus. But she's seen far much more intricate maneuvers: A friend once made a complete poster for spirit week, full of glitter, during the commute in order to school.
"She had her glue in addition to her glitter. She would pour it from the glue and then pour it the government financial aid the jar -- I don't think she spilled a single little bit of glitter, " she said.
Grace's base school is Chantilly. Like any traffic-hardened veteran, she separates the woman's commuting time into "good visitors days" and "bad traffic days. "
"Sometimes if traffic is basically good, we get there in 8 a. m., " a visit of about a half-hour, Elegance said. "And sometimes we reach one's destination right before the bell rings" from 8: 30. On a recent icy morning that spawned dozens of car accidents and backups, Grace caused it to be to school at 9: 40.
She sees the positives. "You make a lot of friends on the bus. I can take homework that I don't discover how to do and say, 'Here, guide me. ' There's some math whizzes around the bus. It's like study lounge. "
In Prince William State, 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 from the rural, western part of the actual county. The stars are still bright when Hogan gets within the bus each morning. He attends Stonewall Jackson Senior high school, near Manassas. Prince William is constructing a high school for western-area students, but it won't open right up until 2004.
Until then, the kids just get accustomed to the journey.
