People ask me sometimes what the hardest part of growing Innova Preparatory School has been. They usually expect me to say funding, or accreditation, or finding the right staff. Those were hard. But the hardest part was something nobody puts in the leadership playbooks: the sustained willingness to not know what you’re doing and keep going anyway.

There Is No Playbook
When I joined Innova Preparatory School in 2022 — a dual-accredited, diploma-granting school for neurodiverse learners in Mississippi — I did what any reasonable person does. I looked for models. I read everything I could find. I talked to people who had built schools before.

None of it quite fit. Because what we were trying to build didn’t exist yet in our state. We weren’t implementing a proven model. We were shaping one in real time, with real students, in a state where the infrastructure for this kind of school was essentially nonexistent.

The absence of a map is terrifying right up until you realize it means you get to draw one. Then it’s just terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.
The Things That Actually Mattered
Here’s what I’ve learned about what actually matters when you’re building from scratch:

Mission clarity over everything else. When you don’t have resources, systems, or precedent, mission is the only thing that makes decisions for you. Ours is simple: neurodiverse students in Mississippi deserve a real school that earns them a real diploma. Every hard decision flows from that.

The first families are your partners. The families who trusted us in the early years weren’t just enrolling their kids — they were making a bet on a vision with us. That relationship is sacred. We owe them more than service delivery.

Accreditation is a gift, not a burden. The dual accreditation process was tedious. It was also the best thing that could have happened to us. It forced us to build systems we might have otherwise deferred, and it gave our students and families something we couldn’t manufacture: external validation that what we’re doing is real.

What I’d Tell Someone Starting Now
If you’re considering leading a school — especially a mission-driven school serving students who have been underserved — here’s what I’d tell you:

Know exactly who you’re building for. Not in a demographic sense — in a human sense. Know the specific student your school exists to serve, and build every decision around that student.

Get comfortable with legitimate uncertainty. You will not have all the answers. The goal is to have values that are clear enough that you can make good decisions without them.

Find your people early. The staff members who came in the early years didn’t come for the salary or the stability. They came because they believed in what we were building. That kind of buy-in is irreplaceable.

And finally: the students will tell you if it’s working. Not on surveys. In the way they walk into school in the morning. In whether they bring their whole selves into the room. That’s your real data.