In the News: Ivybrook Academy Press Q1-Q3 2026

If you want an honest read on a franchise brand, start with what people outside the company say about it. Over the past several months, Ivybrook Academy has shown up in national parenting media, in local news across a string of new markets, and in the franchise trade press and on founder-focused podcasts. Read together, that coverage answers most of the questions a prospective owner asks before signing anything.

A founder-led brand, now in its 20th year

Business North Carolina put Jennifer and Drew McWilliams in its August issue, tracing Ivybrook from a first-grade teacher’s frustration with one-size-fits-all classrooms to a brand in its 20th year. The detail worth sitting with is not the growth. It is the roughly ten years the McWilliamses spent running their own campuses before they franchised anything. They made the mistakes on their own schools, not someone else’s, and only handed the model to owners once they had lived every part of it.

That story went straight to the people you’d be joining. This fall Drew sat down with two franchise podcasts, the Franchise Fit Podcast (Spotify) for an episode titled “How He Built 100+ Locations from One Preschool,” and the Best Franchise Brands Podcast. A founder who will spend an hour walking through how the business was actually built tells you more about a partnership than any brochure can. The 20th-anniversary milestone also went out nationally through PR Newswire, carried by 183 outlets.

Growth that is showing up market by market

The clearest sign of momentum is local. This year newsrooms covered Ivybrook openings across the country, each treated as news in its own community. Richmond BizSense reported a new campus taking shape in a former Awful Arthur’s restaurant space in Henrico, opened by a local dad who enrolled his daughter at an Ivybrook, liked what he saw, and decided to run one himself. The Cleveland Jewish News covered the first Ivybrook in northern Ohio, in Solon. Oregon’s Valley Times marked the brand’s Pacific Northwest debut in Tigard. And the Fort Mill Sun reported a campus opening this fall in Indian Land, South Carolina, the second for a couple who have owned the Fort Mill campus since 2017.

Ivybrook now serves families in 22 states, with more campuses in development. For an owner, that is the pattern you want to see: a brand entering new regions with enough traction that local reporters cover the openings, and a pipeline that is still wide open.

A model the trade press keeps stopping to explain

Franchise Chatter ran a founder Q&A under the headline “How Ivybrook Academy’s Half-Day Preschool Model Sets It Apart in Early Childhood Franchising.” The half-day structure is what makes Ivybrook read differently from the full-day centers that fill most of the category. It is built around a young child’s attention span rather than an adult’s workday, and that choice shapes the daily rhythm, the real estate footprint, and the staffing model an owner runs. Add the blend of Reggio Emilia and Montessori, and the position is a premium, philosophy-driven school rather than custodial care. That is why the trade press keeps covering the model as a differentiator, and it is the same difference families feel the moment they tour.

The classrooms are the real proof

The coverage that has nothing to do with franchising may be the most useful piece for a prospective owner, because it shows the product is real and worth a reporter’s time on its own. A chick embryology project at a Florida campus drew local TV coverage and then traveled nationally through Yahoo Life and AOL. In Colorado, KRDO and other newsrooms covered a Young Authors Week where preschoolers wrote, illustrated, and read their own books. And Ivybrook’s VP of education and training, Daniela McElhaney, was quoted as an early childhood expert in national parenting outlets including Parents and New York Magazine’s The Strategist.

For an owner, that kind of awareness is a tailwind. Families walk into a campus already knowing the name, and the classroom stories driving the coverage are the same ones happening at every campus, including the one you would run.

The franchisor is investing in owners right now

In June, Ivybrook introduced a $5,000 reduction on the initial franchise fee for qualifying educators, built into its 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document. In July, its annual conference coverage centered on the franchise community and accelerating momentum. The reduced fee is aimed at a specific person: a career educator who has thought about running a school of their own.

What the coverage adds up to

Strip away the outlets and the reach numbers and the through-line is simple. Ivybrook spent 20 years proving a model in its own classrooms before asking anyone else to run one, and it still chooses owners the way it always has. Financial qualification gets you in the room. Genuine commitment to children and families gets you a campus.

If any of this has you curious, the next step is a conversation, not a pitch deck. Explore Ivybrook franchise ownership.