By Heather Ramsay--Making button blankets and animal masks are all in a day's work for students at Queen Charlotte's Living and Learning School.The hands-on private school, which has been offering an alternative education experience for Islands' students for 16 years, may be at an all-time enrollment low, but spirits are still high.The school must have 10 students to continue receiving per student funding from the Ministry of Education said parent Alison Waldie, "But this has been our grace year." They only had nine students this year and have to be back up to at least 10 by the fall.The school, which delivers BC curriculum in its own creative way, has had as many as 22 students enrolled over the years. With so few students this year, parents considered packing it in. "But there was just so much good work that went into [the school]," said Ms Waldie. She thinks that with the help of Kindergarten, which the school has offered for three years, they will be okay. But their April 1 open house is also a chance for parents and prospective students to check out the unique facility.The Observer got a preview tour through the seaside school with Ms Waldie pointing out features, such as the library full of books the students arranged into the Dewey Decimal system themselves (with guidance from university-trained librarian Lois Burkell). There's also a fish tank/salmon hatchery and new computers in the lab. They've got a proposal in to replace the deck on the Bay Street house the school purchased about five years ago. Ms Waldie says they hope to build a greenhouse on it, to grow food for the school's hot lunch program.The meal program is part of the value-added experience students get at the school. It's not funded, she says, but everyone decided it was important. "We're here because we believe in choices," she says. "It's a hands on environment and the students have input on the way things go."Not only do the students plan the meals and do the grocery shopping, they also meet once a month and bring their opinions to a meeting with parents and teachers as well.Parents contribute too, either with curriculum or administration. "It's not as onerous as some have in mind," she says. They have come up with many alternate ways to meet that requirement, including one parent who chose to pay for someone else to teach a unit and another who cleans the school in exchange for tuition fees. According to Ms Waldie, the school focuses on the outdoors and the environment, especially field trips. "We love to explore our community and the islands," she said.Mentorship and skill building within the community is important and Ms Waldie showed off the stack wall that students built with Lawn Hill resident Netonia Yalte. The social side of school is important too, she says. Meeting members of the community is key, as is having all the students work together. The students, who range from Kindergarten to Gr. 7, aren't segregated and work together a lot. "It's really nice to see how that plays out in terms of the skills they leave here with," she says. The school has had many fresh teachers - they can't offer the same salary or benefits as the public system - but the unique school can offer the freedom to work outside the system. This year's principal/teacher Bobby Lee Chatelaine came in her first year of teaching and has had such success that she's staying for next year too. "We hit the jackpot," said Ms Waldie - the children love her too.All this is with half the per student funding provided to public schools. The school district receives around $14,000 per full-time student (along with other grants) to fund the public school system, and the Living and Learning School gets around $7,000 per student. Ms Waldie says the monthly tuition, at $130, is the lowest for any private school in BC. The next cheapest on Cortes Island is around $300 a month."We do that to ensure that anyone who wants to come can find a way to come," she says."It's a real community. And it feels good."