EARTHQUAKE: THE LONG ROAD BACK : Students Get a Taste of Cabin Fever : Schools: For nearly 2,000 teen-agers who usually travel from other parts of L.A. to West Valley campuses, this vacation is unwanted.

The last worry on Rachel Moreno’s mind is her high school’s quake-crumbled administration building and the classrooms she will never sit in again.

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“I just want to see my friends,” said the 14-year-old Kennedy High School student. “I just want to be with everybody, my teachers, everyone.”

It is week three of, yes, an unwanted vacation for nearly 5,000 students at Kennedy and El Camino Real high schools in the San Fernando Valley, whose broken campuses have been closed since the Jan. 17 earthquake.

But for one large block of those students--the ones who live over the hill in other parts of Los Angeles and are bused as far as 30 miles to campus--the separation from school has left many feeling isolated from friends and abruptly severed from their social lives in the Valley. After staying home while most others their age went back to school, these teen-agers are expressing a new appreciation for their rigorous school routine, a day that typically starts before dawn and includes a daily commute of up to three hours in lumbering school buses.

“Even though it’s far away, school is a big part of me,” said Jennifer Rivas, 17, a Kennedy senior who lives near Downtown. “I always liked my school, but now my appreciation has grown.”

Some traveling students said they have felt cooped up at home, without a car and with admonishments from their parents not to run up phone charges.

“All my friends live in the Valley--I can’t call them because the bill will be too high,” said Rivas, a drill team member who usually woke up at 5 a.m. to catch the bus and because of practice didn’t get home on most days until about 8 p.m. “School is my home away from home.”

About 990 youths from the city and the East Valley ride buses to 2,300-student Kennedy High School in Granada Hills. El Camino Real in Woodland Hills, with a 2,700 student body, takes in about 1,000 traveling students.

Several hundred of these students from Kennedy and El Camino flocked to meetings this week that were for many their first reunion with teachers and classmates since the quake. The meetings were held in the gymnasiums at Manual Arts and Crenshaw high schools, closer to the neighborhoods where the students live.

Although the sessions were designed to bring parents up to date on quake-related school issues, the students searched out their friends and crowded around teachers, asking questions about the campus damage they have only seen on television. There were hugs and smiles all around.

“What about the work bench, did that fall?” 16-year-old Roderick Crow asked his El Camino wood shop teacher, Barry Lampke, as they greeted each other with hearty slaps on the back.

No, the computer didn’t fall, Lampke reassured the student. “What about the tools?” Crow fired back. “They all fell, but it’s not a big deal,” the teacher replied.

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Ricardo Manzo, a tackle on the Kennedy football team, has been reduced to watching daytime talk shows to occupy his time. Carlos Zavala, a defensive end on the Kennedy team who lives in South-Central Los Angeles, used to wake up at 5:30 a.m. on school days. He now sleeps in until 10:30, then putters around the house blasting rap music until his parents get home from work and he can take the car to work out at the gym.

“You really can’t enjoy the time off because it came so suddenly,” Zavala said. “Any day they can say school will be open. I just live one day at a time.”

Norma Cardenas, a Kennedy sophomore from South-Central Los Angeles, said resuming classes will feel like a vacation after cooking and cleaning her house for nearly a month.

“Going back to school will be like a homecoming,” she said. “It’s been so boring at my house. Every time I see the clock I think about what period I would be in. Right now it’s fifth period, typing.”

School officials have said the weeks of uncertainty are coming to a close as they rush to open both schools in portable classroom trailers. Firm reopening dates have not yet been settled, but El Camino Principal Joyce Washington said she expects the gates to open “in a couple of weeks.” Kennedy is aiming for Feb. 15.

Many of the Kennedy and El Camino students said they are pleased that the district did not disperse them to schools closer to home, and instead chose to keep them together with their classmates.

“I wouldn’t feel comfortable going to another school,” said Cardenas. “I’ve been going to school in the Valley since junior high. I’m used to it already.” A few students said they would feel like outsiders in their neighborhood schools because they have spent most of their young lives on Valley campuses.

Some parents said they have looked into switching their children to nearby schools, and a few dozen of the traveling students have transferred to Fremont High in South-Central and to Taft and Granada Hills highs in the Valley.

But most parents said they wanted their children to stay with the schools where they have friends and know the teachers.

“This is my choice. I want my daughter to keep going to school in the Valley,” said Jewell Martin, who lives near Baldwin Hills and whose ninth-grader attends El Camino.