After-School Activities Saved From Cutbacks : Education: Officials say reduction was made in error. Funds are on hand to pay those who oversee extracurricular programs.

Extracurricular activities that had been threatened with elimination at junior and senior high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District were saved Tuesday when district officials backed down from the cutbacks.

Schools once again will be able to field marching bands, publish student newspapers and yearbooks and put on plays and concerts after extra pay was restored for teachers who oversee those activities.

The pay differential can go as high as $3,000 a year for a high school teacher. Without the extra pay, most teachers had refused to sponsor the extracurricular activities, which can require hundreds of evening and weekend hours during the school year.

“It created a lot of fury on campus,” said Kelly Burtis, who teaches music at Carson High and will begin planning his fall concert. “The kids were distraught, the teachers were upset. There are kids who go through school dreaming about this kind of thing, then you tell them, ‘You can’t have a yearbook this year,’ or ‘We’re not going to put on a spring concert.’ ”

In approving a $274-million package of budget cuts last June, the school board had voted to save $1.1 million by ending the practice of providing extra pay to teachers who coordinate after-school activities.

Deputy Supt. Sid Thompson sent letters to almost 150 schools this summer informing them that teachers could lead after-school activities only as volunteers--that the district had no money to pay them.

But when school started two weeks ago and wholesale cancellations of popular activities began, the district was deluged by complaints from teachers, parents and students. Thompson said this led officials to re-examine the cut and discover that it was never intended to apply to teachers who run after-school activities, but only those who accept extra academic assignments, such as chairing the math or English department.

He blamed that error--rather than public pressure--in his announcement Tuesday that the cut had been rescinded.

But school board member Julie Korenstein said the anger expressed by students and their parents may have played a role. “We got lots of calls from parents who were confused and upset, so (budget officials) took another look,” she said. “Now, I hope we can get these activities back on track so the students don’t lose out.”

Denise Rockwell-Woods, vice president of the teachers union, said the union had urged teachers not to take on the additional duties without extra pay.

“The teachers were between a rock and a hard place,” she said. “They care about the kids and they wanted to continue, but these things take a lot of extra time and they should be paid for that.”

Rockwell-Woods said the mistake, which threw schools into turmoil as popular activities were disbanded, “is a typical failure of a bureaucracy where the people in one office don’t talk to the people in the next room, so no one knows what anybody else is doing.”