Earthquake: The Long Road Back : High School to Be Shut at Least a Month : Education: Parents react angrily to the delay. Students at a Granada Hills school will relocate in two weeks.

Students at an earthquake-damaged elementary school in Granada Hills will be able to enroll in a nearby middle school in two weeks, parents learned Wednesday--but students at El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills will be out for at least four weeks and may not be back in their usual classrooms until April.

At a meeting attended by more than 1,000 parents and students Wednesday night, parents reacted with outrage to the news of the expected long delay in reopening El Camino Real.

Los Angeles Unified School District officials said they plan to bring in 50 portable classrooms at a cost of $5 million to resume classes in about four weeks, hoping they will bridge the gap until repairs to the school’s buildings can be completed.

It will take until at least April 1 to repair quake damage to the school’s three main buildings, which hold 120 classrooms and the main office, they said.

“The alternative plans I just heard tonight are not acceptable,” said Ike August, whose daughter is a senior at the high school. “The federal government in two days was able to shelter thousands of people--we’re talking about April.”

Parents of students at Van Gogh Street Elementary School received somewhat more optimistic news earlier in the day. School officials said their children’s classes will be resumed at nearby Frost Middle School within the next two weeks while a study is begun to determine if the soil beneath the Van Gogh Street school is stable.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Laura Chick and school board member Mark Slavkin--who had announced his candidacy for the state Assembly earlier in the day--pledged to try to speed up the process, but could offer no alternatives.

“We can brainstorm, but we will proceed with the bungalow plan until a workable plan emerges,” Slavkin said.

Students from John F. Kennedy and El Camino high schools will be permitted to enroll in nearby high schools provided there is room, said Dick Browning, the district’s director of high schools.

Earlier in the day, Doug Brown, the Los Angeles Unified School District’s director of facilities, told a group of about 150 Van Gogh parents that while inspectors have declared their school building structurally sound, deep fissures that cracked the school’s floors could indicate a more serious soil problem. A study of the soil problem could take as long as three months, he said.

Van Gogh’s 370 students will be relocated to Frost as soon as that school’s 26 damaged classrooms can be restored, Brown said. The district is also exploring the possibility of using portable classrooms at the Frost campus, he said.

Frost Principal Jay Peterman, who also attended an afternoon meeting with Van Gogh parents, said his school can hold 2,000 students and has an enrollment of 1,300.

Parents expressed concern about when--and if--their school would reopen.

“I’m not saying I want my kids to come back here if it’s unsafe, but why can they so quickly decide to rebuild Northridge mall and Cal State Northridge with that devastation and we’re sitting here in limbo?” asked Mara Cohen, a mother of a second-grade student. “Why are mall shoppers more important than students?”

Brown told parents that after an independent geologic and seismic evaluation last week indicated that the school may not be safe in future quakes or aftershocks, district officials would rather err on the side of caution. He gave the school a 50-50 chance of reopening.

“The ground is so unstable and we know so little about it that for your safety and for your children’s safety, we need to make a temporary relocation,” Brown said. “I would not put my own children or grandchildren in this school at this time.”

Meanwhile, City Councilman Hal Bernson, who represents the area around Van Gogh, said he questioned whether the school district was using the soil survey as an excuse to shut down the school.

Although he did not speak at the meeting, he said afterward that he questioned whether the move to Frost was hasty.

“I’d like to see them determine if it’s safe, and I think it is if it withstood this tremendous earthquake,” Bernson said. “I think their real agenda is to close this site.”

Los Angeles Schools Supt. Sid Thompson said Wednesday that he would not speculate on whether the site will be closed until the reviews are complete.

“I’m responsible for these kids--not the city of Los Angeles,” Thompson said. “Our latest reports show us it’s not safe at this point.” Principal Maureen Diekmann said the Frost site was chosen because the younger children could be segregated from the older students. Thompson said that district officials are also examining the possibility of using other sites--including Rinaldi Adult Education Center--on a more permanent basis if Van Gogh is determined to be unsafe.

Abigail Goldman is a Times staff writer and Susan Byrnes is a special correspondent. Times staff writer Beth Shuster contributed to this story.