Given the importance of school operators in meeting Education Cities members' school growth goals, Education Cities was interested in the question: What do operators want? What roles and activities of local harbormasters are most, and least, helpful to those running great schools? Between October and November 2015, they interviewed 18 operators in eight member cities. The range of operators included new single-site schools, well-established homegrown charter networks with multiple campuses, and local charter operators that have scaled nationally. Operators also represented a diverse group of cities with varying levels of charter market share and maturity. The goal of the study was to shed light on the various roles operators can and should play for their charter schools. They hope the feedback from operators will help city leaders assess and reflect on the roles they currently play, and tease out the root causes of common tensions they may feel with operators in their day-to-day work.