WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Public school officials in the nation's capital raced to fix a typographical error in an anti-truancy advertisement that was splashed on city buses, sending the district's education system to the back of the class.

The error -- a missing ``s'' in the slogan ``Go to Class -- It' a Blast!'' -- came amid a city drive to improve academic standards and revive flagging public sentiment about the city's aging schools.

``The 's' was left off the contraction,'' public schools spokeswoman Denise Tann said Thursday, adding that the advertisement, which appeared this week on 75 buses, had been sent to the printer spelled correctly but that the error in the subsequent proof had been overlooked.

``We have had some calls about it, but immediately as it was discovered it was corrected. They worked overnight ensuring the buses that rolled out this morning were all correct.''

-- kritter (kritter@adelphia.net), January 08, 2001