This report is the second of a series documenting a study of alternative schools in American education. The report focuses on the role of the school principals in managing diverse educational programs in their schools. Its purpose is to provide helpful information to school districts considering the implementation of alternatives and to assist state and federal policy-makers who may be interested in this innovation. The study addresses three main issues: how alternative school principals are selected and the relationship of these selections to the districts' system of alternatives; principal leadership styles and the distinctiveness of alternative programs; and principal leadership and conflict between competing alternative programs. For the purpose of analysis, school principals in four districts--Alum Rock, California; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Eugene, Oregon--were classified according to three broadly different approaches to decision-making: authoritarian, functional, and collegial/democratic. Three behavioral types, as composites of principal management styles, were developed that closely parallel these three approaches: the director, the administrator, and the facilitator. In addition, the alternative programs were classified into two types, based on their method of organization: those that are located with other programs in one school building and those that are organized as separate-site programs. (Author/IRT)