Creating Two Columns is Stripping Tags

I hired a coder (now MIA) to create a function that breaks a page’s content into two columns. The code works. But in the process, it strips away all the <p> tags. The code is below. Any ideas?

function split_content() {
global $more;
$more = true;
$content = preg_split('/<span id="more-\d+"><\/span>/i', get_the_content('more'));
for($c = 0, $csize = count($content); $c < $csize; $c++) {
$content[$c] = apply_filters('the_content', $content[$c]);
}
return $content;
}  

function content_split($text, $separator = ' ', $start = false ) {

if ( $start === false) {
$start = strlen($text) / 2;
}

$lastSpace = false;
$split = substr($text, 0, $start -2);

// if the text is split at a good breaking point already.
if (in_array(substr($text, $start -2, 1), array(' ', '.', '!', '?'))) {

$split .= substr($text, $start, 1);
// Calculate when we should start the split
$trueStart = strlen($split);

// find a good point to break the text.
} else {

$split = substr($split, 0, $start - strlen($separator));
$lastSpace = strrpos($split, ' ');

if ($lastSpace !== false) {
$split = substr($split, 0, $lastSpace);
}

if (in_array(substr($split, -1, 1), array(','))) {
$split = substr($split, 0, -1);
}

// Calculate when we should start the split
$trueStart = strlen($split);
}
//now we know when to split the text
return substr_replace($text, $separator, $trueStart, 0);

}

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