Greatest Wheels on the Bus Music pertaining to Children to perform to find out Language.

Total travel time for it to and from Wheels on the bus go round and round: about 4 hours.



"The first day I attended school, I was like, do I want to do this? " Freeman, 16, said. But the ride easily 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 to get to his local high school.

It once was 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 belong to suburban students, willing to put in the time so as to attend a prestigious magnet college.

"Oh, I think it's worth every penny, " said Freeman, a senior at Thomas Jefferson. "I'm very happy at this school. It's among 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 let you know when I felt it -- in that rare occasion when little ones miss the bus, and I am just taking them home. I'm imagining, 'Wow, "' said Montgomery Blair Secondary school Principal Phillip Gainous. Long commutes have grown routine at the Silver Spring secondary school, one of the largest throughout Montgomery and home to magnet programs in communications and technology 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 often easily stretch longer. Students learn how to make the best of the idea: One recent morning, a group of Thomas Jefferson freshmen huddled around a smallish light clamped to a math textbook to study for a test. Another college student strummed a guitar. Still others dozed to music off their portable CD players.

Montgomery Blair once offered somebody program that gave far-flung students safe places to remain if the roads were tied up with bad weather or injuries. But the program died out of lack of use, Gainous said. "We don't do that any longer, because the kids are accustomed to traveling or waiting with the school, " he said. "They simply just sleep or do their homework. "

Grace Chung, a 15-year-old Thomas Jefferson sophomore, tries to squeeze in a few study time on the shuttle. But she's seen far far more intricate maneuvers: A friend once made a full poster for spirit week, including 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 the jar -- I don't think she spilled a single bit of glitter, " she said.

Grace's basic school is Chantilly. Like just about any traffic-hardened veteran, she separates the girl commuting time into "good targeted traffic days" and "bad traffic days to weeks. "

"Sometimes if traffic is basically good, we get there in 8 a. m., " a visit of about a half-hour, Leeway said. "And sometimes we arrive right before the bell rings" from 8: 30. On a recent icy morning that spawned lots of car accidents and backups, Grace made it to school at 9: 25.

She sees the positives. "You make lots of friends on the bus. I can take homework that I don't learn how to do and say, 'Here, aid me. ' There's some math whizzes within the bus. It's like study area. "

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 your county. The stars are still bright when Hogan gets about the bus each morning. He attends Stonewall Jackson 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 accustomed to the journey.