RALEIGH - The Wake County school board agreed today that $380.3 million should be the baseline for for helping them set future annual school budgets with county commissioners.

Both elected boards are exploring developing the multi-year funding formula as a way to try to end the annual bickering over how much money should be provided to schools.

School leaders said that getting $380.3 million - $79.6 million more than they now receive - would provide enough additional money to close the academic achievement gaps in the district.

"This is what we feel is appropriate to close the gaps," said Rosa Gill, chairwoman of the school board.

School administrators stressed this doesn't change the fact that the school board is asking for $355.5 million from the commissioners as part of the budget adopted last month. That request is a $54.7 million increase.

Superintendent Del Burns said $380.3 million should be considered a parallel number that would be used for the proposed multi-year funding formula.

Last month, the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce and the Wake Education Partnership proposed that the school board and commissioners develop a multi-year funding formula to improve student achievement.

As part of the deal, the school board would turn over school construction to the county.

On Monday, commissioners passed a non-binding resolution in support of the concept.

Ann Majestic, the school board's attorney, stressed that any deal won't be binding in future years because of potential changes in membership on both elected boards.

The multi-year formula would involve the school system setting a baseline number for which future funding would be based upon.

Whether commissioners agree with using $380.3 million remains to be seen.

The other impetus for the $380.3 million is an outside audit of the school district's curriculum found last year that Wake needs to do more to close the achievement gap.

White, Asian and affluent students do better, on average, that students in other groups.

Starting from the $355.5 million figure adopted by the school board, administrators proposed $24.8 million in additional programs designed to close the achievement gap.

Some of the new programs proposed today include: - Expand the number of students who can attend alternative schools -- $5.3 million. - Increase salaries for support staff -- $4.2 million. - Increase salaries for teachers -- $3.9 million. - Pay a person to be the testing coordinator for each school -- $3.5 million. - Add literacy teachers to work with grades 3-5 -- $2.5 million.