So why does it take you 4 hours a day?
I can’t tell you myself. I get on the bus in the mornings and am one of the first person on. It takes like an hour and 10-ish minutes just to pick up the rest of the kids in my area (middle school kids I think, and I have no clue why it takes that long) and then another 20 minutes or so to arrive at the transfer hub where I take another bus to my school. In the afternoons I’m usually the only one on the bus that takes me from the hub to my stop.
If you live in an area like mine, I’d guess it takes so long because the bus stops at every other house to pick up a kid, or two. Waaayyy back in my day, all the kids in a two or three block area would gather at one stop to be picked up. Today, because of traffic concerns, many of them get “curbside service.” That can really add some time to the trip!
So you are at a magnet school that requires extra travel?
This kind of “curbside [school bus] service” sometimes exists in rural areas where the students live far apart from each other rather than in clusters that allow them to walk a short distance to a place where the school bus can pick up or drop off multiple students. Living 45 minutes by car from the school suggests that it is possible that the OP lives in a rural area with this kind of situation.