The Senate's proposed $20.05 billion budget relies on an average of two more students in classrooms across the state.

Increasing class size to 20 students in K-3 and 22 in grades 4-12 would save $320 million annually, said Sen. Linda Garrou, the senate's senior budget writer and a Winston-Salem Democrat.

The class size proposal is likely to find favor among Republicans who have previously called for the change.

Garrou and her fellow appropriations committee co-chairs gave a peek at the Senate's budget Monday. The full document will be available online at 7 p.m. The details released so far highlight a document that differs from Gov. Beverly Perdue's budget in several key areas.

The budget would lay off as many as 712 state employees and eliminate some 900 vacant positions. Perdue's proposal would have sought to keep layoffs to a pool of fewer than 300 employees.

The leaders of state departments would have targets to meet in cuts. Officials could make the cuts in several ways including furloughs, said Sen. A.B. Swindell, a Nashville Democrat. Perdue said she avoided furloughs because she feared the message it would send to businesses and investors about the state's financial condition.

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