EARTHQUAKE: THE LONG ROAD BACK : Quake Damage Forces 2 Large High Schools to Share Campus : Simi Valley: Students from Simi and Royal will double up. Most youngsters in the district are already back in class.

While most Simi Valley students returned to school on Monday, officials were hurriedly mapping plans for the district’s two largest high schools to temporarily operate under one roof beginning Wednesday.

Simi Valley High School is not ready to reopen, so the school’s 2,100 students will double up at 1,800-student Royal High School on split shifts until damage from last week’s quake can be repaired, Supt. Mary Beth Wolford said.

Nine other schools that were not fixed by Monday will open their doors today, including two of the schools hit hardest by the 6.6-magnitude temblor: Township Elementary and Valley View Junior High.

“We don’t look pretty, but we’re safe,” Township Principal Barbara Marino said.

Structural damage at those schools and Simi Valley High was not as bad as officials first feared. But at Simi Valley, workers over the weekend found asbestos in the ceiling tiles, requiring a special contractor to remove it, officials said.

Until the high school reopens, both schools will run on shortened schedules of six 40-minute periods, rather than 50 minutes each. Royal will be in session from 7 a.m. to 11:35 a.m. and Simi will start at 12:15 p.m. and run to 4:50 p.m. Optional lunch for both schools will be from 11:40 a.m. to 12:10 p.m.

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Information booths will be set up today in front of both schools to answer questions from the community, Wolford said. In addition, school and city buses will be available at the Simi High parking lot at 11:15 a.m. to transport students, she said.

“We wanted to get the kids back into a school schedule,” Wolford said.

Wolford said she expects to know by today how long the two schools might have to operate as one. The timeline depends on how quickly the asbestos is removed so that district maintenance workers can resume tearing out loosened stucco and patching cracked walls.

Simi Valley High students were warned not to return to their lockers to get books or other supplies. “The campus is a restricted area,” Wolford said.

At the same time, officials took pains to reassure parents of children at Township Elementary that heavy ceiling-light fixtures that fell onto desks in every classroom have been reattached with special bracing to sway rather than detach in an earthquake.

“You’re looking at one of the worst-hit schools, and it’s in great shape,” Assistant Supt. Ralph Wilson said on Monday.

Districtwide damage, initially estimated at about $5 million, has been revised downward to about $3 million, Wilson said. One-third of that will be spent fixing the badly damaged gym and multipurpose room at Simi Valley High, Wilson said.

Officials do not know how much federal or state aid will be available to reimburse the district, which already faces a $2.5-million deficit for the next school year.

“I guess we’re hoping someone will drop it out of the sky,” school board member Judy Barry said as she watched construction at Township. “I really don’t know where the money is going to come from.”

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Meanwhile, thousands of Simi Valley children at 17 of the district’s 27 schools returned to class on Monday for the first time since the quake hit a week ago. Teachers encouraged students to talk about their fears so they could come to grips with them.

From first-graders up, students wrote stories and stood up to tell tales about what happened at their house during the earthquake. Others drew pictures to represent their feelings.

In her class at Crestview Elementary, fifth-grader Rochelle Frederiksen drew a picture of children hiding under their desks to illustrate how it feels to be nervous.

When the 10-year-old stood up to show it to classmates, Rochelle said: “If there’s an earthquake, I don’t know where my family is, and I want to be with my family.”

Christina Goodman felt differently. She shared her picture, “Happy,” a design of bright colors. “My picture is happy because everybody in my family came out OK,” said 10-year-old Christina.

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Often just as shaken as the students arriving at school were their parents, said Crestview Principal Ronda Oster. Many mothers came to tour the campus before leaving their children in the morning.

“They could go right in the room and see it was OK and see the walls were still standing, and that helped,” Oster said. “But I think the moms had a harder time leaving than the students had returning.”

Many students seemed more skittish than usual, but that is to be expected, teachers said. Returning to a routine adds to their sense of normalcy, said kindergarten teacher Charlotte Kasten.

“They want to be with their friends and they want to play, but they notice every crack in the ground,” Kasten said.

Sixth-grader Melissa Lee seemed to confirm that view. The 11-year-old was shaken by a minor aftershock shortly after 10 a.m. But she still was glad to be back at school, Melissa said.

“Now I can get life back to normal,” she said.