So said the gist of a proposal by mayors representing constituents from both school districts. The reception by each transition team to the proposed compromise, delivered to each side during separate meetings Friday, was indifferent at best, frosty at worst.

"I can tell you we don't like these numbers," said Steve Newton, chairman of the east-side transition team representing the new, break-away Jordan School District.

Ralph J. Haws, chairman of the west district's transition team, said he worries that while west-side mayors may favor the proposal, he isn't certain they informed the west side's various city councils of its consequences. "My impression was [the west-side mayors] did not endorse it as something we should adopt," Haws said.

Still, both teams agreed to give the two-page proposal more thought before rejecting it outright.

The proposed compromise centers around the original Jordan School District's 2003 capital construction plan, which included $281 million in new bonding proceeds passed that year, plus $31 million in capital outlay funds. As a result of the district's school board decisions at the time, $11 million or 3 percent of those total monies were directed toward east-side school construction projects, while $357 million or 97 percent of those monies were directed toward west-side school construction.

In breaking down the proposal details, Kelvyn Cullimore, Cottonwood Heights mayor and one of the original proponents of the split, noted that when the school bonding plan was conceived, the east side was to receive 18.5 percent of the total funds, not 3 percent.

"That kind of disparity is what led to the concerns of the east side," he told members of the east-side transition team.

Mayors believe the west side should give the east side $33 million without interest over a 15-year period as a partial "remedy" to that past "inequity," as the proposal states. The money would pay renovation costs for one of the east side's middle schools. Meanwhile, the east side would remain obliged to repay 57 percent, or $160 million, of the original $281 million bond.

Continuing his criticism of numbers released Wednesday by the Jordan district showing that the west side would face a $16 million annual shortfall in general and capital funds after the split, Newton emphasized that the remaining district would receive more than $19 million in equalization and other funds to soften the blow.

He accused the west-side transition team of seizing on those numbers to exaggerate the cost of the split.

"I don't think their agenda has anything to do with dividing assets," Newton said. "It's about killing the split, and making it as painful as possible."