The purpose of this phenomenological investigation was to identify if perceptions exist among five elementary school principals assigned to non-accredited and accredited elementary schools in the Richmond Metro Area of Virginia that the effective use of the correlate, "cultural competence" should be used as a key leadership objective to decrease suspension rates and improve end-of-year performance to attain accreditation. The phenomenon, perception, was investigated qualitatively by using the phenomenological research technique to determine principals' preparedness to use all of the correlates of an effective school; yet, emphasizing "cultural competence" as a key objective in improving end-of-year school performance needed to obtain full accreditation. The researcher used survey interviews through the platform Qualtrics. Qualtrics, developed by Smith (2021), was used to triangulate themes that represented perceptions that may have required a revamp to shoehorn "cultural competence" to conduct the investigation. Qualtrics is a qualitative research tool that can be used for coding and analyzing transcripts and field notes, building literature reviews, creating network diagrams, and data visualization. Specifically, the investigation was designed to determine if current school division policies are sufficient to select principals who are charged with the development and advancement of youth labeled as economically disadvantaged. This investigation focused on the following three research questions: 1) How do principals' utilize their administrative experiences to make student discipline decisions? 2) How do district policies influence principals' decision-making on discipline? 3) What are principals' perceptions on their preparedness to lead an inner-city school? [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.]