Bonnie Robinson doesn’t enjoy much of a view while eating her lunch outside Lawrence Alternative High School.

From her perch on a concrete bench, she can’t see much but the school’s conglomeration of portable classrooms.

That soon will change. Thanks to the efforts of a community volunteer group, the school is constructing a gazebo-like shelter where students can gather. At the same time, a $600 grant will help provide flowers, benches and other landscaping outside the school, 2600 W. 25th St.

“It’ll be a lot more pleasant,” said Robinson, a senior. “This will make it feel more like home.”

The biggest change in scenery will be a 16-by-40-foot shelter that will be used as an outdoor classroom and lunchroom for the 120-student school.

The project was conceived by a group of six members of the 2004 class of Leadership Lawrence, a Chamber of Commerce program that teaches residents about the community with a goal of increasing their leadership skills. An end project of the class is to complete a volunteer project with a youth organization.

“It was very ambitious,” said Laura Porter, an art teacher. “We don’t have a place to eat, unless you stand in the hallway. These kids always go outside to eat, even in the winter.”

Shane Munsch, a Leadership Lawrence member who works at Astaris, said the group had secured $5,000 in donated time and materials for the project to add to the $500 Kansas Health Foundation grant his group initially had to use on the project.

“Aside from the obvious — giving them a place to hang out — it gives them some real pride in the campus,” Munsch said. “In some ways, they’ve been forgotten. They’re stuck out there on their own. We said let’s give them a reason to be proud of the campus and give them a landmark everybody knows.”

From left, Bob Hubert, ecology teacher at the Lawrence Alternative High School, Bonnie Robinson, senior, John Muse, sophomore, and J.R. Battiest, senior, prepare the ground surrounding the high school for planting.

Meanwhile, science teacher Bob Hubert secured $600 from Wal-Mart’s environmental stewardship program to landscape the front of the school and to plant three gardens. His students are completing the project to learn about the environment.

“We wanted to spruce things up, but it’s also a learning opportunity,” Hubert said. “Service learning is an important part of what goes on here.”

The Alternative High School provides a flexible curriculum to students wanting to receive their high school diplomas but for whom traditional school setting isn’t a good fit. Porter, the art teacher, said the improvements might be enough to keep a few students in school longer.

“For some of these kids, we’re the last step before getting a GED or dropping out,” she said. “It’s like a small family community.”

6News video: Improvements under way at Lawrence Alternative High

J.R. Battiest, a senior who was digging in one of the gardens Tuesday, said he wasn’t sure he’d place that much importance in having the new outdoor lunch area.

“We just sit around,” he said. “But it’s better to sit around something like this than something that’s bare and dead.”