WHO WE ARE

LPAEF: A 15-Year Legacy in Motion — Not a New Mission, Just a New Structure

The story of the Life Preparatory Academy Education Foundation (LPAEF) cannot be understood without understanding the leadership behind it. The programs, partnerships, and educational impact that define LPAEF today are the direct continuation of a mission that began more than fifteen years ago under the direction of Sherre A. Padgett, Ed.S. Her work as a classroom teacher, a STEM outreach educator at Auburn University, an independent educational consultant, and ultimately the co-founder of Life Preparatory Academy forms the backbone of the Foundation’s purpose and reach. LPAEF is not a new idea, but the formal expansion of a mission she has advanced for over a decade. Although LPAEF was formally established in 2025, its mission, leadership, and community impact trace back more than fifteen years. LPAEF is the natural evolution of a deeply rooted educational ecosystem built by the same founding team that has been serving communities since 2010. The Foundation represents the nonprofit arm of a long-standing legacy, not a new or untested initiative.

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The Nexus: From Classroom Educator to Community Architect

1. The Beginning — High School Biology Teacher (Pre-2010)
   Sherre A. Padgett began her career in the classroom, teaching high school Biology with a focus on academic elevation for underserved and underrepresented students. These early years were where her instructional philosophy was forged, her research-based, student-centered strategies took shape, and her ability to transform academic outcomes emerged. This period laid the groundwork for everything that followed.
    

2. Expansion into Higher Education — Auburn University COSAM
   Sherre later expanded her influence through work with Auburn University’s College of Sciences and Mathematics (COSAM) in STEM outreach. There, she designed and facilitated STEM learning experiences, engaged K–12 students in science enrichment, strengthened university-to-community pipelines, and built relationships that would later become critical institutional partnerships. This stage represented the bridge between classroom teaching and large-scale community programming.
    

3. Establishing Independent Impact — SPECS (2010)
   In 2010, Sherre founded Sherre Padgett Education Consulting Services (SPECS) to expand that impact beyond a single school or institution. Under SPECS, she provided tutoring and academic intervention programs, delivered ACT, GRE, and standardized test preparation, created enrichment and summer academies, reached tens of thousands of students over fourteen years, brought programs to churches, schools, nonprofits, and families, and partnered with institutions including Auburn University, Tuskegee University, and Tennessee Tech University. SPECS became the foundation’s predecessor — the first major demonstration of sustained, community-wide educational impact.
    

4. Creating a School — Life Preparatory Academy (2018)
   By 2018, the vision matured into a full-scale educational institution. Life Preparatory Academy (LPA) was created as a hybrid online and virtual school built on academic acceleration, enrichment, and college preparation. LPA served students across multiple states, provided a home for ACT excellence, and created year-round academic structures to support the mission established through SPECS.
    

5. The Natural Evolution — LPAEF (2025)
   The formation of Life Preparatory Academy Education Foundation (LPAEF) in 2025 was not the birth of a new initiative; it was the maturation of an established mission. LPAEF was created to provide scholarships for underserved and gifted scholars, expand access to high-quality educational programming, support STEM initiatives and camps, underwrite academic enrichment models proven over fifteen years, amplify the reach of LPA and SPECS, and build sustainable partnerships with schools, universities, and communities.
    

LPAEF stands on more than a decade of measurable outcomes, trusted community engagement, long-standing institutional collaborations, and a leadership team whose work has transformed the educational trajectories of tens of thousands of learners. This is the true Nexus — the story that positions LPAEF not as a start-up nonprofit, but as the next strategic chapter of a mission that has been changing lives for over a decade.