Education software giant PowerSchool is seeking to expand its financial management capabilities at a critical time for school spending, acquiring a K-12 fiscal planning and budgeting provider, the company announced.
PowerSchool is acquiring Allovue, a software provider founded in 2013 that aims to build innovative finance strategies that improve outcomes for students.
The deal will allow PowerSchool to add “intuitive and flexible” budgeting tools to its product suite, which seeks to offer real-time budgeting information, analytics, and dashboards to track and manage spending, according to the announcement.
The acquisition was made public as the end of pandemic-era federal emergency aid draws closer and school district leaders face tough decisions about what to continue funding moving forward. PowerSchool referenced the loss of that pool of money — a combined $190 billion has been allocated to K-12 education over the past three years — in announcing the acquisition.
“As federal stimulus funding winds down, budget management, impact analytics, and budget transparency become even more critical in K-12,” PowerSchool CEO Hardeep Gulati said in a statement.
Allovue CEO and Founder Jess Gartner will become the PowerSchool Group Vice President of Allovue. All of Allovue’s current customers and partners will be supported by PowerSchool moving forward, the companies said. (Gartner is a member of the board of trustees of Editorial Projects in Education, the organization that oversees Education Week and EdWeek Market Brief.)
This is the latest in a series of acquisitions since 2015 by PowerSchool, a publicly traded company that estimates its products support 50 million students globally. Most recently, the company completed a $300 million purchase of the communications and operations platform for K-12 districts, SchoolMessenger.
QS acquires career navigation platform. The higher education data, insights, consultant, and solutions provider QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) announced it has acquired 1Mentor, a career navigation platform.
1Mentor’s tool is mean to help students identify high-growth jobs and the skills they require, and offers targeted course recommendations, according to the company. With the merger, QS aims to help bridge the gap between industry needs and academic institutions, the announcement said.
“QS believes that universities and business schools must play a pivotal role in bridging the skill gaps and remain relevant in the long run as new models of education emerge.” President Nunzio Quacquarelli said in a statement.
Terms of the merger were not released.
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