PARENTLINK: Acquired by Blackboard for an undisclosed sum. As its name suggests, ParentLink, founded in 1989, offers a suite of tools that lets schools and districts communicate with parents via phone calls, text messages, emails, and old-fashioned faxes and printed letters. It currently serves over 8,000 schools across the U.S. This marks the fifth acquisition for Blackboard in 2014 as it attempts to jumpstart a "culture of innovation" and perhaps woo back customers that have switched to other learning management system providers.
