The rustling of musical scores stops in the band room at Grant High School as the teacher mounts the conductor's podium. Jason Rodriguez begins barking out staccato commands to the 18 students seated in a semicircle around him. "You're flat!" he yells at a young girl puffing into a flute. He is glaring at her and waving his arms, as if he could physically lift the note up to the correct pitch.

"Stop!" he screams, his face reddening with outrage at an off-key rendition of the school fight song. "What was that supposed to be?" He glowers at the students, who begin fidgeting with their instruments. In the silence, his scream seems to hang in the air. When he raises his arms and the music begins again, it's in perfect tune.

The students' eyes are riveted on him as he strides around the classroom, leaning in close to listen to one musician after another. It's a slightly peculiar sight: One of the straps of his denim overalls is dangling near his knees and a gold hoop earring adorns his left ear. He looks barely as old as the students he is leading . . . not surprising, considering that the teacher, a high school senior, is only 17.

When the school year ended last June, the Los Angeles School Board announced plans to lay off thousands of teachers to save money for the cash-strapped system and Grant High seemed destined to join dozens of other schools that had been forced to jettison music programs. But a makeshift deal that relied on a principal's inspiration and a student's spunk saved Grant's Lancer Marching Band: Jason, the drum major for the band last year, was shoved to the head of the class this fall when his teacher was let go, a testament to the notion that hard times can encourage initiative as surely as they breed despair.

His students oscillate between awe and resentment of him, grudgingly grateful for his dictatorial leadership. "It was a real shock to them at first to come in here and see a student in charge," Jason says modestly. "But they accepted it, because they want to play the music and this is the only way we have to survive."

Other music programs at the school that spawned such talents as saxophonist Tom Scott, rock band Toto and Monkee Mickey Dolenz were not so fortunate. Choral teacher Marsha Taylor was able to squeeze a few orchestra members into her piano class and she gave up her free period to teach a beginning instrumental course. But the school's acclaimed jazz band folded without a teacher, and the chorus had to pare its concert schedule.