I had the same problem.
I want to separate front-end and back-end development. Make a JS MVC and REST reference CRUD implementation to demonstrate the concept. Find an accessible MVC framework for Javascript which everyone on the team can understand. [CanJS-JQuery] Find a light weight MVC framework for PHP that does not capture our code. [Slim]
This is my reference app in progress: http://think-a-doo.net
Hope it helps