HCP Conducts Culture Study for Local Charter School

LUTZ, FLA. (May 5, 2017) Lutz Prep, a highly-regarded charter school located in Hillsborough County, recently engaged HCP to conduct a culture study. The school’s mission is to provide a rigorous, differentiated learning experience in order to cultivate and inspire a community of life-long learners. Celebrating the five-year mark, the Board of Directors made the determination that this was an important time to conduct a culture study to set a plan in place for the next five years and beyond.

HCP worked with a designated Lutz Prep Board Member to pinpoint the groups to include and the categories of questions to cover. The ultimate three groups identified were Board Members, Administrators and Faculty. Categories of questions 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, Admin and Faculty; and performance metrics including themes of communication, responsiveness, support, professionalism, etc.

The research team recommended a telephonic methodology via semi-structured interviews, due to the ability to gain responses to a base of questions but also allow the interviewer to probe further into topics. Prior to deploying the calls, HCP extended a set number of invitations to each of the three respondent groups that correlated with the respective size of each group.

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

HCP presented to the Board of Directors a series of observations and recommendations on March 30, 2017. 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 Administration of the school, the Board of Directors and the Faculty.

Chairperson of the Lutz Prep Board of Directors Sean Harrigan said, “We’re eager to move forward with the recommendations from this study serving as our guide to decision making that will improve Lutz Prep for all parties involved for years to come.”

Lutz Prep is completing an exercise to prioritize the recommendations shared. The Board will then assign metrics to each of the recommendations. These metrics will serve as monitors as to how well each of the three groups is responding to the priorities.

For more information on Lutz Prep, please visit www.lutzprep.org.