New School vs. Old School

May 05, 2008 by Elizabeth Ziegler

Student Growth on West Side Complicates Jordan District Split

(KCPW News) The influx of students into Jordan School District - Utah's largest -is complicating the district's planned split. Jordan's west-side received most of the new student growth, and therefore most of the bond money to build new schools. Residents of the district's East-Side helped fund the West-Side growth, but now the Jordan-East transition team wants a refund. West-Side transition chairman Ralph Haws says this wasn't part of the deal.

"That is something very difficult for our team to agree to," Haws says, "to pay them hundreds of millions of dollars. And then to turn around and say the only alternative now for building new buildings and maintaining the level and quality of education we have on the West Side is to just raise taxes 15, 20, 30-percent."

Haws says what's being proposed now to divide the assets of the Jordan District is not the same deal pitched to voters. He says the soft agreement was to consider each school as having the same value - they were to be split between the two districts along the boundaries. There was no mention of assessing the market value for each building and then reimbursing the East Side, which has more old buildings than the growing west side. It is one of the biggest sticking points now in negotiations between the two teams. Jordan West Transition Team Chairman Steven Newton says the teams will likely need an arbitrator to decide whether the east side should be reimbursed for its investment in expensive west-side growth.

"That has yet to be addressed: How do you value a school?" Newton says. "And I think the newest proposal by the negotiating teams is: We're not even going to argue that, we're going to leave that to the arbitrators, and we are going to argue that to the arbitrators. Because it seems to be too controversial."

Both East- and West-Side Transition Teams have reviewed the second proposal to divide the district's assets. A meeting planned for last week was canceled. Negotiations between the two teams are expected to resume this week.

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