Facility design and the planning steps within this process are part of continued discourse among school design professionals and school officials. Historically, schools often mirrored architectural designs of a time-period or as a response to economic trends. The discourse has evolved over time, and recently, there has been an increasing focus on how facility design impacts teaching and learning. As a result, the actual predesigns and design phases are at the forefront of the debate. Since there are no widely established planning models for educators and architects, it is important to continually explore these phenomena which will ultimately provide clarity within the design process. This investigation sought to determine 1) What are school principals' perceptions about their involvement in the predesign and design phases of school building? 2) What are school principals' perceptions about the involvement of different stakeholder groups in the design of school facilities? 3) What are school building principals' perceptions about the connection between the district vision and planning of the building? This study interviewed 14 administrators that experienced the design process as either current high school principals or former high school principals from school districts in western Pennsylvania. I selected the participants using PlanCon as the guiding criteria. Additionally, I completed the interviews in this investigation via a telephone call with each participant. The findings revealed that principals were not able to establish clear roles on the design team; however, they did indicate communication and safety were the most significant roles throughout the process. The findings also revealed that principals reported architects, superintendents, and school board members all had the largest extent of influence on the actual design. The data also illuminated a lack of consistency in the design team and levels of influence within each project. These findings provided insight into the level of connectivity between the facility design and the academic vision. The connection of the school design to the academic vision reported to having moderate connections when the design of the school included principal's input. The participants also indicated that academic vision was not part of the actual process after the initial predesign phase. Future research would help shed light on the design process and members of the design team. Potentially, broadening the scope of this study to include more schools or different perspectives (i.e. superintendents, architects, teachers, etc.) would give enough insight into the design process to begin to develop best practices or protocols for predesign and design of schools. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]