This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

If at first you don't succeed, try cutting the price tag in half.

Jordan School District, facing a steep growth curve, is back with another massive bond proposal to fund new school buildings in southwestern Salt Lake County.

The nearly quarter-billion-dollar bond, if approved by voters in the upcoming election, would fund six new school buildings, including two high schools. It comes three years after the district tried and failed to pass a half-billion-dollar bond to build even more schools. That one didn't just lose. It was spanked, gaining only 33 percent of the vote.

So the district has come back with a tighter package to deal with 9,251 more students expected over the next five years. That growth alone is bigger than the total enrollments in 27 of Utah's 41 school districts, and Jordan is already using 250 portable classrooms in parking lots and playgrounds.

Charter schools will absorb some of that, but district data show that a good chunk of elementary charter students make their way back to traditional public high schools and all their educational and social variety. That's why more than half the bond money is going to the two new high schools.

In rejecting the $495 million bond in 2013, voters challenged Jordan District to suck it up, and it did. It went back and cut construction costs by 17 percent and built two elementary schools with operating funds instead of bond money. It also will continue to use operating funds to handle upgrades at older schools, leaving the bond money for new schools. Even the Utah Taxpayers Association, which opposed the 2013 bond, is standing down this time, acknowledging the district followed its advice to tighten belts.

And in a political calculation, the district isn't looking as far down the road. To make the bond a more digestible size, the Jordan Board of Education is building for the next five years, not the next 10.

The Jordan Board of Education puts the cost of the $245 million bond at about $17 per year for owners of a $300,000 house. Because the district also has other bonds that will be paid off in the next five years, taxpayers could even see that $17 drop in five years.

Don't count on it. The forces at work — including Utah's declining but still largest-in-the-nation birthrate — make it all but certain that part of the valley will need more schools in five years.

But that's an argument for getting on with it now before every inch of school grounds is buried in portables. Jordan District voters should approve this bond and start building.