How Tulsa’s bold experiment is bringing families closer to stability

Dawn is breaking outside as Alexis Stephens ferries her daughter into daycare, past the bright yellow lobby with its metal animal mural and into the classroom. Addison plops onto a rug and reaches for a ball. Ms. Stephens sits beside her.

It’s a routine – play, hugs, and goodbyes – that usually takes 10 minutes before Stephens goes to work. Addison was six months old when she started here, and she knows its rhythms. Today she begins her day in a mixed class with three infants who are grouped around a teacher. But Addison, who turned 2 in June, has eyes only for mom.

Stephens rolls the ball back to her. “This is one of those mornings when she’s going to take a little more convincing,” she says. Change has been a constant in Stephens’s life since Addison was born. She’s been in jail, entered a rehabilitation program, kicked her addiction, found a full-time job, and gotten custody of Addison and Carson, her son. In August, she moved out of a women’s shelter and into the house of her new boyfriend. It’s a longer commute to the daycare, but Stephens doesn’t mind.

For Addison, “it’s not going to get any better than this. Are you kidding?” she says.

Addison is one of 164 kids at Educare, a year-round early-learning center that is a flagship project for Tulsa’s foremost philanthropist, George Kaiser. He’s also the benefactor behind