Lutz Preparatory is a highly-regarded charter school located in Hillsborough County. Their mission is to provide a rigorous, differentiated learning experience to cultivate and inspire a community of life-long learners.

To launch the culture study, HCP Associates developed categories of questions that touched on the mission and vision of the school, and how well the respondents felt the school was delivering on that mission; role critiques of the Board, Administration, and Faculty; and performance metrics including themes of communication, responsiveness, support, and professionalism.

The research team recommended semi-structured interviews via a telephonic methodology due to the ability to gain responses to a base of questions and probe further into topics. Before deploying the calls, HCP Associates extended a set number of invitations to each of the three respondent groups correlated with each group’s respective size.

Upon completing the interviews, HCP Associates reviewed transcription notes from the calls and categorized the comments, looking for the most frequently named accolades and the most frequently named areas of improvement.

HCP Associates presented to the Board of Directors a series of observations and recommendations. The team identified resounding praises shared by the respondents and then segmented recommendations for the three main respondent groups, yielding a list of improvements for the school’s administration, board of directors, and faculty. Lutz Prep is completing an exercise to prioritize the recommendations shared. The Board then assigned metrics to each of the recommendations. These metrics served as monitors of how well each of the three groups responded to the priorities.