EARTHQUAKE: THE LONG ROAD BACK : Learning Curve : Life in Shelters Poses Special Hardships for Students Struggling to Keep Up With Classwork

At 6:15 a.m., when the lights go on at the Mason Avenue Red Cross Shelter in Chatsworth, Jannet Nguyen, 11, is among the first up and out of her cot. She has a lot on her mind.

“Yesterday I didn’t do my homework because those kids, they’re too noisy,” Jannet said, her words coming out in a rush of frustration while her mother implored her two younger sisters to get ready for school. “I’m worried about that. I don’t want to get a D or F.

“It’s hard to go to school and live here.”

Jannet is among more than 100 students in the Los Angeles Unified School District who are still living in shelters. They are picked up by district buses each day and taken to 67 schools citywide, according to Alan Tomiyama, the district’s director of transportation.

The students on the shelter buses are--along with others who have been left homeless but get to school in other ways--some of the most displaced victims of the Jan. 17 Northridge earthquake. Their plight is a lonely one; the youngsters are isolated from homes and friends, and emotionally stressed.

Jannet did not want to tell her teacher that she did not finish her reading homework because, for now, she does not have a home. “I don’t want her to know it because I don’t want to say it,” she said.

“They are going to need a lot more resources and a lot more support,” said Dr. Loeb Aronin, the district’s director of psychological services. “We’ve never had enough psychologists, or enough nurses or support personnel in general. And now you’ve got a more critical crisis situation. . . . I don’t know that we have enough staff to keep up.”

At the Chatsworth shelter, 23 children waited Tuesday morning to be ferried to school. Three buses stopped to unload students at schools along the route before doubling back to the shelter to pick up more pupils.

Angelica, 6, started on her long bus ride with three children she did not know who attend different schools. She did not speak to them, staring out the window instead.

The other children spilled out of the bus at Germain Street Elementary School, not far from the shelter, and ran to join their friends. Angelica, dwarfed by the rows of empty green seats, still had a long ride to Lassen Street Elementary.

She gazed out at the Cal State Northridge tent city as the bus lumbered by. “My home used to be close to the school,” she said, not taking her eyes from the window. “My mom drove me. I don’t have nobody to talk to now. I don’t like to be alone.”

A school district bus also took Rachel Kinney, 12, from the shelter to her private Lutheran school in North Hollywood. Rachel and her mother, Wendy, decided to keep their troubles to themselves.

“It’s a church school,” Wendy Kinney said. “On Sunday, everyone would say, ‘Awwww, are you OK?’ It’s kind of hard to take so that’s why we’re keeping it quiet.”

As a result, other students are not as sensitive as they might be if they knew of her troubles, Rachel said. Classmates do not know why she has worn the same clothes day after day. They say things that they might not say if they knew about her situation, she said.

“They just sort of carry on with everything,” Rachel said over her shelter breakfast of Apple Jacks and a danish. “They talk about how mean their moms are and they don’t even know how bad it can get. They talk about how their lives are so hard.”

Rachel finished breakfast in time for her scheduled bus departure at 7:20 a.m. A bus driver poked her head into the shelter to look for her passengers. Jannet and her sisters grabbed sack lunches and walked slowly to the bus.

“I hate it to live here,” Jannet said. “My sisters, they’re going to school and I know it’s hard for them because I’ve been their age. They need my help but I just can’t help--I can’t even help myself.”