And the Jordan School District's legal separation - Jordan East v. Jordan West - seems headed for family court.

Every competing list of assets, every threat to pack up and leave looks like the resentful sorting of the CDs. The welfare of the kids is forgotten in the fight for the furniture.

"There are those who truly had it in mind to benefit the students and get local input into children's education," says Taylorsville Republican Sen. Michael Waddoups. "But the split got hijacked by some people who were concerned about the money. They want to have lower taxes and they don't care about the children."

Waddoups is being nice; he's giving the other side the benefit of the doubt.

Not me. I think this split was about money from the beginning.

When I talked to Jordan East founding father Kelvyn Cullimore, Cottonwood Heights' mayor, more than a year ago, his head was full of numbers - the injustice of a recently approved $280 million bond that would build more schools west of Interstate 15 than east of it, the escalating costs of retrofitting aging east-side schools, poll results showing overwhelming east-side voter support for a scheme to dump the west.

But he tried to act the statesman.

"It is really about more effectively meeting the needs of local constituencies, whether east, west, north or south, through better governance," Cullimore wrote in a Tribune editorial last June.

After watching a bickering couple of boards snipe over the assets, we know better. The lofty motivations of a year ago seem muddled, at best.

This split still is all about the children, but not about ALL children. It's my children, not your children.

Using connections in legislative leadership, the east side has managed the split on Capitol Hill for two years. From Cottonwood Heights Republican Sen. Carlene Walker's original legislation carving the west side out of the vote to Sandy House Speaker Greg Curtis' demand for a special session last summer. Even split critic Sen. Howard Stephenson's "equalization" formula helped east-siders look out for their children. Some call the Draper Republican's plan "Marxist," as in, wealth redistribution.

Meanwhile, Waddoups' request for a special legislative session to slow the whole thing down, perhaps reset the rules, languishes in the governor's office. The governor insists on consensus. Fat chance.

So now, the game of this-is-mine-and-that's-yours shifts to schools everywhere else in the county to make Jordan West's financial straits a little easier to bear. The plan siphons nearly $1 million from Murray School District, $1.4 million from Granite, $3.7 million from Jordan East and more than $6 million from Salt Lake City.

"I don't see the argument: Stealing education dollars from one group of kids and giving those dollars to another group of kids is not good for all kids," says Democratic Salt Lake County Councilman Joe Hatch.

But for some, this final argument about money is about the children - earthquake-proof schools, libraries and computers for our children, not their children.

"Money speaks to the ability to educate," says Waddoups.

It's natural that parents - east and west - would selfishly grasp at every education dollar they can.

"My kids need a new middle school to replace the one they're in, but it is nowhere on the [Jordan School District's] list of things to do for the next decade, while 20 brand new schools are being constructed elsewhere," says Scott Bracken, an east-side father.

Soon, the rest of us will be drawn into this fight. Hatch predicts the Salt Lake City School District will have to raise taxes to make up for the lawmaker-approved garnishment.

"Somebody ultimately is going to get screwed and it's going to be the north half of Salt Lake County," he says. "As a Salt Lake City resident, I will be paying more taxes so parents living in a much larger, much nicer home in Draper will pay fewer taxes for their kids to go to school."

I chafe at the idea that my son's Salt Lake City school will go without so a school can be built in Herriman or rebuilt in Cottonwood Heights. But I'll deal with it. I'll consider it child support.

Too bad east-siders couldn't have done the same.

walsh@sltrib.com