Earthquake: The Long Road Back : 2 High Schools Will Be Shut Till March : Education: Decision to keep damaged El Camino Real and Kennedy campuses closed upsets some parents. It gives 5,000 students an unexpected seven-week vacation.

By BETH SHUSTER and STEPHANIE CHAVEZ

Feb. 1, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

Supt. Sid Thompson said Monday that El Camino Real and John F. Kennedy high schools--the two Los Angeles city secondary schools with the most earthquake damage--will not reopen until March, a move that did not sit well with some parents.

The decision leaves 5,000 students scattered across the city with an unexpected seven-week winter vacation. In the interim, district officials plan to provide some instructional programs at El Camino using portable classrooms but no plans have been made yet for Kennedy.

Thompson said at a news conference Monday that the March reopening followed the wishes of the staff of both schools to delay classes rather than temporarily divide students among other campuses. Public meetings were scheduled this week to address parents’ concerns.

“I could have moved a lot of kids around this city and gotten them located . . . just so I could have said I got them back in school,” Thompson said. “The important thing is to keep these kids back at their school sites.”

“I have a bottom line premise--no young person will suffer from this educationally,” he said.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, which had about 14,000 students still out of quake-impacted schools Monday, sustained significant damage at about 170 campuses. Most suffered architectural and cosmetic problems with a handful sustaining serious structural damage.

El Camino has no structural damage but classroom partition walls were loosened and could collapse; Kennedy’s three-story administration building suffered structural damage and will need rebuilding.

Thompson also announced that another eight schools will reopen today. They are: Andasol Elementary, Canoga Park Elementary, Castlebay Lane Elementary, Granada Hills High, Patrick Henry Middle School, Leonis Continuation School, Tarzana Elementary and Tulsa Elementary.

Another 11 schools will reopen later this week or next Monday. After that, only the two severely damaged high schools and Van Gogh Street Elementary in Granada Hills will remain closed.

Based on Red Cross information, the district estimates that 836 students are staying at shelters throughout the city. On Monday, about 100 of those students were picked up by district buses and taken to their local schools, officials said.

Parents at El Camino in Woodland Hills and Kennedy in Granada Hills were complaining Monday that they have been given little information about the schools’ status and have been left out of the decision- making. Some parents said the district should be working faster to get their children back in their own school.

“It’s really terrible. I think it’s much too long,” said Jay Lee, a parent with one child at El Camino. “I haven’t been given any information. There’s nothing for these kids to do.”

Chris Leder, another El Camino parent, said: “We don’t pay enough attention to these kids. We’re saying: ‘We have broken down schools, no money and you don’t count.’ This is real hard on these kids.”

El Camino plans to use portable classrooms to offer optional classes for Advanced Placement students and others preparing to take the SAT exam. Thompson said a program may also be offered for students who speak limited English.

“What about the kids that really need help, what’s going to happen to them?” asked Evelyn Aragon, whose daughter is a junior at El Camino.

At Kennedy, Principal Andreda Pruitt said there are no plans for any optional classes during the break.

“It seems like a very long time for school to be out,” said Juliet Charles, a teacher’s assistant at Kennedy whose daughter attends there. “I’m concerned about the students. I’m advising them to read and start practicing some math.”

Thompson said there was no intent to exclude parents from decisions. But he said the district needed to examine its options in the aftermath of the Jan. 17 quake before parent meetings could be held.

“We had to get our act together to tell them our options,” Thompson said. “It would have been premature. We waited until we had a better feel for what the damage was.”

El Camino will hold a parents meeting on campus Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. and Kennedy will hold two meetings--at 7 p.m. Thursday at the school and next Monday at the school district’s senior high division on 17th Street in Downtown.

Of El Camino’s 2,700 students, 900 are bused from around Los Angeles. Of Kennedy’s 2,300 students, about 1,000 are bused to school.

To make up for some lost class time, officials said the two high schools probably will extend the school day by 39 minutes and the school year by two weeks to meet state requirements.

The state’s top two education officials--Acting Supt. of Public Instruction William Dawson and Maureen DiMarco, secretary of child development and education--said they would not criticize the school closure decisions from Sacramento.

“It’s difficult for me to sit up here and second-guess the decisions that are being made locally on this issue at this time,” Dawson said. “I’m not prepared to say that any of the decisions are inappropriate.”

School board member Julie Korenstein, who represents Kennedy, said she cannot blame parents who are upset with the delay in resuming classes but supports the superintendent’s decision.

“It’s really the most frustrating situation that I can imagine being in,” Korenstein said. “This was a disaster and, of course, my preference would have been to get these kids back sooner but the schools made the decisions themselves. They did not want the kids scattered.”

At Van Gogh Street Elementary in Granada Hills, which will undergo an extensive geological study, students will have to be relocated--perhaps by next week, officials said. The students, which has deep fissures in the corridors and playground areas, probably will be relocated to Frost Middle School in Granada Hills.

Jean Popiel, a parent with one child at Van Gogh and another at Frost, said the lack of information from the schools has been frustrating and that the district should have been more responsive to parents.

“We would just like to know what’s going on with our schools--and more officially and not from calling the school offices or reading the newspaper,” Popiel said. “It would be nice to get official word on what’s going on.”

Frost is scheduled to reopen Wednesday, with about 15 classes relocated to other classrooms because of water damage, officials said.

School Reopenings The Los Angeles Unified School District announced plans Monday for campuses still closed because of damage from the Jan. 17 quake.

Scheduled to open today:

* Andasol Avenue Elementary, Northridge

* Canoga Park Elementary and Children’s Center, Canoga Park

* Castlebay Lane Elementary, Northridge

* Granada Hills High and Magnet School, Granada Hills

* Henry Middle School, Granada Hills

* Leonis Continuation School, Woodland Hills

* Tarzana Elementary, Tarzana

* Tulsa Street Elementary, Granada Hills

Reopening Wednesday: