Alternative student transportation company, ALC Schools (ALC), has been acquired by an affiliate of Palladium Equity Partners, a private equity firm based in New York, NY. The student transportation provider, which saw record numbers in 2019 in terms of transporting special-needs, McKinney-Vento, and displaced students for school districts, says Palladium’s partnership will help support continued growth. “We’re very excited about the future of ALC with this acquisition. We chose to join with Palladium after very careful consideration, and we couldn’t be happier to be a part of their family,” says Gregg Prettyman, Chief Operating Officer for ALC.
For more than two decades, Palladium has been acquiring and investing in middle-market, growth-oriented companies like ALC.
“We are delighted to invest in this great entrepreneurial company that addresses transportation and safety concerns of school districts serving special needs children by applying leading technology solutions. This investment reflects the confluence of several themes that Palladium has invested behind, including non-emergency medical transport, logistics, and healthcare, as well as a continuation of our partnership with Dean Holland, who will be joining ALC Schools as Executive Chairman and with whom we have worked and invested alongside for over 15 years,” says Alex Funk, a Principal at Palladium.
“We are excited to be partnering with the ALC team whose passion to help an at-risk student population is clearly felt in the culture of the successful business they have built. We hope to work with ALC to expand existing relationships with school districts, launch in new states, develop and market new solutions and continue to grow and benefit from strong industry tailwinds, while staying true to their mission of helping the school children most in need. We believe the alternative student transportation provider was a natural fit for Palladium’s portfolio, as a significant amount of investment capital comes from pension funds that support teachers and other public servants.”
This new partnership with Palladium is expected to fuel investment in state-of-the-art technology and help ALC better serve school districts and their students. ALC’s proprietary routing and optimisation software provides districts with significant cost-savings via features like district route sharing, while Field Operations, Student Monitoring and Tracking Teams, and Dedicated Client Services allow the alternative transportation provider to focus on the needs of the individual students.
