CENTENNIAL
There were some excellent
teachers and students in the
years between segregation and
magnet school, but, by 1985,
the quality of education at LPA
had slipped, as explained in a
December 1984 Miami Herald
article. “Lincoln Park does
not match the quality of other
county schools, officials say,
and the time has come for renovations
30
and a new, stronger
emphasis on academics.”
The idea was to attract white
students to LPA without forced
busing, by offering a back-tobasics
and rigorous academic
1970 LPA YEARBOOK
A member of the faculty of LPA in
its last year as a segregated school,
Hill was the St. Lucie County
schools superintendent in 1985
when it became a magnet school.
program with strict dress and
behavior codes.
Rik Gray was on the original faculty of about three dozen
when LPA’s magnet program opened to 642 seventh and
eighth graders. Later, he was named St. Lucie County Teacher
of the Year in 1997 and retired as social studies department
head in 2018, the last of the original LPA faculty.
Gray praises Elizabeth Lambertson, LPA’s principal for the
first 10 years as a magnet school.
Gray said Lambertson told him she was scared that no
one would show up when LPA asked parents to come to
the school to apply for their children to be the first in the
magnet program.
“She told me when she got there early in the morning, the
RIK GRAY
When he retired in 2018, Rik Gray was the last of the original faculty of
LPA as a magnet school. Gray was St. Lucie County Teacher of the Year in
>> 1997, a year before fellow LPA teacher John Lynch won the honor.
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