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

To launch the culture study, HCP developed 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, 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 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. 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. 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 to how well each of the three groups is responding to the priorities.