Jenkintown School District has almost nowhere left to grow, and officials are now eyeing an unusual fix: buying the low-income apartment complex that sits right next to the baseball and softball fields. The district plans to present the idea at a school board meeting Monday at 7 p.m. in the high school auditorium, reviving a concept first floated two years ago but shelved amid uncertainty over funding.
The property in question is Salba Apartments, a 17-unit low-income housing building for adults ages 18 and older at 309 Walnut Street, managed by HumanGood and originally built by Salem Baptist Church in the early 1970s, according to Glenside Local. The one-acre parcel sits directly beside the district's athletic fields, making it one of the few pieces of adjacent land that could ever expand a campus this landlocked. As reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer, the district has little room to expand beyond its centrally located plot, which already squeezes in administration, sports fields, a playground, and all K-12 classrooms onto one footprint.
A Borough Too Small to Build Out
That squeeze is a matter of geography as much as planning. Jenkintown's single unified campus, bounded by West and Highland Avenues, sits within a borough that covers just 0.5 to 0.6 square miles, according to an S&P Global Ratings analysis — making it one of the smallest municipal school districts in Pennsylvania. The Inquirer's report notes the district has added nearly 100 students over the past decade, a roughly 15% enrollment increase even though Jenkintown remains Montgomery County's smallest district.
Jill Takacs, who was superintendent when the district first considered the property in 2024, said at a December 2024 meeting that the district needs more space because special education needs are growing and smaller classes are preferred, per the Inquirer's reporting. Marshall Mitchell said at the time that the apartments were becoming too old to use, even though Salba was reportedly at nearly full capacity in 2024. Salem Baptist Church had offered to sell the property to the school district.
What the 2024 Plan Looked Like — And Why It Stalled
The earlier proposal, evaluated with help from Ambler-based Godshall Kane O'Rourke Architects starting in December 2024, included possible relocation of the school's tennis courts and creation of a preschool center, mental health space, and other facilities, the Inquirer reports. That version would likely have demolished the 17 apartments. Salem Baptist Church had planned to build more affordable housing elsewhere for Salba residents, and the district would have allowed students living in the apartments to remain enrolled even if the replacement complex were located outside the borough.
In May 2025, Takacs announced that an anonymous donor had offered millions of dollars toward the property purchase. But the plan appears to have shifted since then. New superintendent Brea D'Angelo, who took office in July 2026 after more than a decade in administrative roles at Hatboro-Horsham School District — including Director of Educational Affairs, according to the Inquirer — will recommend the board proceed without the donor's money, per the seed reporting.
No Finalized Plans Yet, Superintendent Says
D'Angelo said officials appreciate the donor's continued interest and will consider future support opportunities down the line. In an email earlier this month, she said there are no plans yet for the building, including whether it would be demolished or replaced with a new school facility. She added that the district wants community input and will explore options before deciding how the property fits into its broader campus plan. Salem Baptist Church did not return requests for comment, and HumanGood did not respond either, according to the Inquirer.
The renewed interest comes as the district moves forward on a wider facilities review. During its September 28 meeting, the school board formally approved resolutions authorizing Schrader Group to draft a comprehensive facility master plan with renovation and addition estimates, according to Citizen Portal. Consultant Deborah Bradbury presented the master-plan scope to the board ahead of the vote. Schrader Group is now conducting that feasibility study, which includes assessment of the potential Salba purchase, with a final report expected by February.
The Fiscal Math Behind Any Expansion
Any acquisition would land on top of an already tight budget. The school board adopted a $21.46 million spending plan for the 2026-27 school year in June that included a 3.5% property tax increase, pushing the rate to 54.44 mills across just 1,840 taxable parcels, Citizen Portal reported. That structure means capital decisions carry outsized weight locally: one mill of real estate tax generates roughly $280,891 for Jenkintown, compared with more than $7.7 million per mill in a larger county district like Lower Merion, according to an analysis from Mortgage Montgomery County.
State aid offered some relief this year. Under the $50.85 billion Pennsylvania state budget signed in July, Jenkintown received a 4.5% increase in state education funding for 2026-27, Glenside Local reported. Still, small districts like Jenkintown lean heavily on local property taxes drawn from a limited pool of homeowners, a dynamic that has fueled periodic talk of consolidating with neighboring districts such as Abington or Cheltenham. Borough residents have consistently rejected those proposals since at least the 1950s, according to decades of reporting by the Inquirer, preferring to keep their standalone district despite the higher per-student costs that come with it.
Jenkintown's commercial corridor has seen its own recent changes, with Barnes & Noble reopening a 20,000-square-foot store at Noble Town Center along Old York Road last month, marking the chain's return after it closed its original borough location in 2013, Hoodline reported. Monday's meeting will mark the first formal public airing of the Salba question since D'Angelo took the superintendent's chair, and residents are expected to get their first real look at how the district intends to balance its space needs against the fate of a half-century-old affordable housing building next door.
