Plan to Cut L.A. School Salaries Is Scaled Back : Education: Supt. Anton suggests cutting pay of 58,000 employees by less than 3% instead of 7%. District expects to receive $100 million more in state funds.

Although the Los Angeles Unified School District still faces a $241-million budget shortfall, Supt. Bill Anton has scaled back a proposal to cut the pay of the district’s 58,000 employees by 7% in the coming year.

Instead, Anton has recommended cutting salaries by less than 3%--which would save the district $66.3 million, compared to the $164-million savings that the 7% cut would have generated.

“I don’t see how we can possibly close a $241-million gap without some kind of cuts in compensation,” Anton said Monday.

The pay cut would come on top of cuts in school services. However, the school board voted Monday to preserve several programs and eliminate the need to lay off hundreds of teachers and other employees. A vote on other possible layoffs is not expected until Thursday.

District officials had expected to cut more than $341 million from the school system’s $4-billion budget for the coming year.

However, under an education funding plan passed over the weekend by the state Senate and awaiting Assembly approval, the district stands to get $100 million more than expected from the state for 1991-92.

That will allow the superintendent to withdraw some of his budget-cutting proposals and downscale others, he said. But the payment falls far short of the amount needed to lift the threat of heavy cutbacks from the nation’s second-largest school district.

“We will still have to make cuts of $240 million. . . . That is the best-case scenario,” board member Leticia Quezada said Monday, as the board took preliminary votes on the proposed cuts.

The board held off making decisions on most of the more than 50 money-saving items that the superintendent has proposed until the funding picture from Sacramento is clearer.

On Monday, the board approved only $45,000 in cuts, while voting not to cut several items that would have saved the district more than $175 million, including a reduction in the district’s police force.

Anton had recommended a 5% cut in the district’s police budget, which would have saved $1.3 million. The board nixed that, along with a proposal to cut the force by 50% by removing officers stationed on campuses.

“We’re desperate for more security at our schools,” said board member Roberta Weintraub.

The board also preserved the positions of several hundred teachers, counselors, custodians and clerical workers by voting down more than $76 million in cuts that would have eliminated senior high counselors, required secondary instructors to teach an additional class each day, and assigned fewer custodians and clerical staff to campuses.

The board also voted not to close school playgrounds on weekends, which would have saved the district $3.7 million.

Anton also backed away from several other money-saving plans that he had called top priority on his $600-million “shopping list” of cuts.

He is now recommending against several staffing changes that would result in teacher layoffs, as well as a controversial proposal to eliminate substitute teachers for elementary classes.

Layoff notices have already gone out to about 1,000 teachers, librarians and others. The administrative judge who presided over a monthlong hearing on the layoffs recommended to the board last week that it rescind the layoffs because of “procedural defects” in the process.

“The $100 million from the state, if it stands, means we don’t have to make all the hard cuts we would have, but we still have our work cut out for us finding some kind of package that includes cuts in services and compensation,” Anton said.