09/18/2026
Six years ago, ImpactTulsa started matching eviction court filings against student addresses. What surfaced changed how an entire district responds to housing instability.
ImpactTulsa, a member of the StriveTogether Network, found that the property owners filing the most evictions were clustered in the same neighborhoods as the schools with the highest chronic absenteeism. Between 2020 and 2023, the organization identified filings affecting roughly 4,400 Tulsa Public Schools students. A year later, close to three-fourths of those students were still chronically absent.
That finding became infrastructure. When a student's address shows up on the eviction docket, the district can now reach out to that family with legal aid and rental assistance before a forced move turns into a lost school year. At East Central Middle School, parents can walk into an office by the front door and talk to a navigator and an attorney about rent, food, a hotspot — whatever's most urgent that week. About 40 teachers learned how to help parents document the payments, repair requests and messages that shape an eviction case.
Seven other communities connected to the StriveTogether Network spent 9 months last year studying this model, from Rochester to Dallas to Dayton. What started as ImpactTulsa scraping a court docket is becoming a blueprint in cities throughout the country.
Read the full article from The 74, then be sure to follow ImpactTulsa to keep up with their work.
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