The purpose of this study was to understand how traditional public school principals perceive charter schools. In this qualitative study, I interviewed ten traditional public school principals from the same rural public school system in North Carolina. The principals shared their perceptions of charter schools based on their current and previous experience. They then shared how they have responded to the existence of charter schools and whether the existence of charter schools has influenced instructional or operational changes, marketing or promotion efforts of their school, or anxiety experienced due to feeling pressure to compete for student enrollment. After interviewing the principals and analyzing data, I answered one major research question and two sub-questions. First, principals within this school system setting perceive that charter schools are intended as an idea to be an innovative alternative to traditional public school. Much of their knowledge or actual experience with the existence of charter schools in their respective areas differs from this idea or vision, as they do not feel charter schools, in general, have had a positive influence on student performance. Next, the existence of charter schools has not had a dramatic impact on the decisions that principals have made. Furthermore, the principals acknowledged that the longer a charter school remains in existence in their community, the more it just becomes another school in their community. While principals may have experienced losing a portion of their enrollment to a charter school upon opening, it became less and less of a concern as enrollment patterns stabilized. Finally, the existence of charter schools had some influence on the marketing efforts of traditional public schools overall. However, most principals did not feel as though charter school existence has had drastic influence on their efforts to market their schools, share positive news and events, and build and maintain positive relationships with their community stakeholders. Unlike a dominant theme in the research on this topic, instead of being "forced" to react, the principals largely saw the emergence of charter schools in their area as their opportunity to share the story of their school and tell it in the best way they knew how. [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://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]