
A teacher's classroom vision, a real-estate operator's nerve, and one airline napkin became a half-day preschool network. Drew McWilliams built Ivybrook by protecting the constraint that made it unusual.
A former first-grade teacher saw preschool treating different children the same. Her answer was a three-hour school day, a hybrid curriculum, and a franchise model now wrestling with the best kind of problem: how to scale something built to feel personal.