Start as a co-op. Grow into a school. Keep the same system.
Planning to add tuition, a high school or a second campus? Then the system you start on decides whether that year also means moving every family to new software. Pearspark already does the work each stage adds. Built for schools of 2 to a few hundred students.
Four stages, one system
What each stage adds, and all of it is in Pearspark today. Switch off what you don't use yet; it stays out of sight, with nothing deleted, until you turn it back on.
- Stage 1
Co-op or learning pod
You're here when: Families teach. You meet a day or two a week, and dues pay for supplies.
Pearspark for co-ops- Lesson plans for meeting days and the home days between, with checklists families tick off
- Family dues billed monthly or by term, paid online
- A lending library with barcode checkout and holds families place from home
- Volunteer check-in, with clearance expiry dates
- One portal login per parent, covering every child
- Stage 2
Microschool
You're here when: You charge tuition, a teacher or two teaches every day, and families expect grades.
Pearspark for microschools- Attendance in seconds per class
- A gradebook that turns into report cards
- Tuition invoices per family, with sibling discounts, paid online through your own Stripe account
- ESA and scholarship money tracked by funder, with a per-student ESA invoice
- Health records, with allergy flags on every class roster
- A parent app families install on their phones
- Stage 3
Hybrid or full-time school
You're here when: Families apply for seats, you hire staff, and next year's roster fills while this year runs.
Pearspark for hybrid schools- An application form on your own website, feeding a pipeline with interviews and decisions
- Enrolling an accepted family carries their application onto the student record and sends the parents their portal invite
- Re-enrollment in the parent portal, with a count of who's returning, leaving or hasn't answered
- A year-end rollover that previews every promotion, and can be undone until the new year has work in it
- Financial aid: family applications, sliding-scale bands and scholarships
- Staff roles, a time clock and time-off requests
- Stage 4
Established private school
You're here when: You graduate seniors, answer to an accreditor, or open a second campus.
How records escrow works- Transcripts that print weighted and unweighted GPA side by side
- Graduation requirements, with every student measured against them
- Transfer credit printed under the school or college that issued it
- Records escrow: off-site custody of permanent records, with an attestation for your accreditor
- A second campus in the same account, with its own bell schedule, time zone, tuition plans and admissions window
- A dashboard row per campus: students, attendance, admissions and past-due balances
Started as a preschool instead? Kindergarten is a promotion, not a migration.
What doesn't change as you grow
One record, first day to graduation
A child's attendance, grades and health history stay on one record. The transcript builds itself from grades posted years before; nobody retypes them.
The same logins
Each parent keeps one login as children move up and siblings arrive. Add a campus and your staff keep theirs.
One price schedule
No plan to upgrade and no module fees. The first 20 students cost $50 a month, and the rate per student steps down as you grow.
Off until you need it
Tell us your kind of school at signup and the parts that kind of school usually skips start switched off: a co-op starts without admissions, behavior or scheduling. Switch any part on or off in Settings. Switching a part off deletes nothing.
What a month costs at each stage
- Co-op, 12 students
- $50
- Microschool, 40 students
- $100
- Hybrid or full-time school, 120 students
- $290
- Established school, 300 students
- $650
Unlimited staff and family accounts at every size. No setup fee, month to month. If families pay tuition online, a 0.5% platform fee comes out of those payments. Full pricing
Questions from growing schools
We're a small co-op. Isn't this more software than we need?
Only if you have to look at all of it. Choose "homeschool co-op" when you sign up and admissions, behavior and scheduling start switched off; turn off anything else you don't use in Settings. Up to 20 students costs $50 a month, and switching a part off deletes nothing, so it's there when you grow into it.
What changes on our bill as we grow?
Your subscription changes only with the student count. $50 a month covers your first 20 students; after that each student costs $2.50 up to 100, $2 up to 300, $1.50 up to 600 and $1 beyond. There are no tiers to upgrade, no module fees and no setup fee, and it's month to month. Separately, if families pay tuition online, a 0.5% platform fee comes out of those payments; cash and checks cost nothing.
See the full price scheduleWe're adding a high school. What will we be missing?
Nothing you'd buy separately. Mark a course honors or AP and the transcript prints weighted and unweighted GPA side by side, with a line saying how it was weighted. Write graduation requirements per subject plus a total, and every student is measured against them, including credit earned at a previous school. College courses print as transfer credit under the college that issued them.
Can we open a second campus without a second account?
Yes. Add the campus in Settings. It starts with the school's settings, and you change only what differs: its bell schedule, time zone, tuition plans, admissions window or attendance rules. Staff can be limited to their own campus, and the dashboard gives each campus a row for students, attendance, admissions and past-due balances.
We use something else today. Is moving in hard?
No. Rosters, families, transcripts and gradebooks come in from CSV, and every import shows a preview before anything is written. Ready-made mappings cover exports from FACTS, Gradelink, PowerSchool, QuickSchools, Sycamore, Procare, Brightwheel, Blackbaud and others. It's free and self-serve, and a person answers support@pearspark.com if you get stuck.
When would a school outgrow Pearspark?
When it wants one vendor for tuition management and fundraising, and has a business office to run them. FACTS is built for that and sells it by quote, with implementation and training; Pearspark does no fundraising at all. Need-based aid alone isn't that line: Pearspark takes aid applications and applies sliding-scale awards, and if you want a formal need assessment, a service like Clarity does it and its decisions import here by CSV.
Where FACTS is the better choiceStart at the stage you're at
Thirty days free, then month to month. If you ever leave, a full export of your data goes with you, with no exit fee.