INDIANAPOLIS -- The state's largest teacher's union and the superintendent of public instruction are at odds over how to slash $300 million from education spending.

State Superintendent Tony Bennett on Friday forwarded Gov. Mitch Daniels a plan to freeze teacher pay, a move the Indiana State Teachers Association is firmly against, 6News' Norman Cox reported.

ISTA had been touting its plan as one that could save $700 million. But after Cox went to the union offices and pointed out several math errors, the union reduced its claim to $510 million.

The union wants schools to reduce spending on general overhead by 5 percent to save $195 million, allowing schools to transfer $85 million from construction funds to operating funds that pay teachers, which would require state approval.

Schools would tap rainy day funds and unused cash balances for $200 million more, and they would suspend most testing programs to save $30 million.

But the lobbyist for school business officials calls the plan vague, especially the part on reducing overhead.

"There's a lot of things, I'm sure, that we can agree with them," said Dennis Costerison, director of the Indiana Association of School Business Officials. "But again, the bottom line is, we haven't seen the specifics. So, you know, it's a lot of numbers in there that we need to really look at before we can say that we would agree with them totally."

But ISTA President Nate Schnellenberger defended the numbers.

"Well, those numbers that I gave the state board yesterday were based on the calculations that the governor and the superintendent of public instruction asked the business management department to do," Schnellenberger said. "So I don't know the specifics of those. We just took the numbers from what they came up with."

Meanwhile, Bennett has forwarded his board's recommendations on cuts to the governor, which includes pay freezes for all school employees, including teachers.

"This is a fundamental reset," Bennett said. "I do believe everyone we heard from yesterday understands that this is a very different scenario that we've ever faced before."

If the governor approves Bennett's plan, he can order most of the cuts into action, but he can't order any freezes on teacher pay.

The union has to agree to renegotiate that, and thus has the power to block part of the plan from becoming reality.