NATCHEZ — At Pleasant Acre Day School, it’s Mardi Gras almost every day.

The students at Pleasant Acre, a learning center for adults with special needs, sort through Mardi Gras beads donated to the school and organize them first based on color then by length and diameter. The students then package the beads to be sold at the school’s Beads Galore Shop.

The proceeds from the bead sales support field trips for the students. The Pleasant Acre students recently traveled to Jackson to take in a show and stayed at the Cabot Lodge.

The Miss-Lou community has been so supportive of the school’s bead donation program and bead shop, director Mary Ann Foggo-Eidt said, Pleasant Acre is running out of room for the beads.

At the top of the Pleasant Acre’s holiday wish list is an addition to their current building — a room just for the students to collect, sort, bag and sell beads.

The Natchez-Adams County Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Natchez program raised $22,000 for an addition to be made to the building in 2007.

“That was just a godsend,” Foggo-Eidt said. “There was no way we could work on the beads and display the beads and operate on a daily basis if we didn’t have that space.”

The bead room serves multiple purposes, Foggo-Eidt said.

“Our little kitchen and eating area is in there, and we work in there yearround,” Foggo-Eidt said. “It would be just marvelous to have just a room for the beads.”

Pleasant Acre has been operating since 1959, a feat Foggo-Eidt said would not be possible without the support of the community.

“We receive no state or federal money; it’s all just the support of the Miss-Lou community,” she said. “It’s the donations and the community that has kept the school afloat all these years.”

The school operates on a “shoestring budget,” Foggo-Eidt said.

“We are as frugal as frugal can be,” she said. “The money we generate from our shop and beads it affords the kids these perks to go out on trips and experience life enriching programs, and, of course, it takes money just to keep the doors open.”

Foggo-Eidt said she is constantly overwhelmed and amazed by the generosity of the school’s supporters who make it possible for the school’s students to learn life skills they can take home.

“It’s really become a home away from home, and we are just like a little family out there trying to make it day by day,” she said.

Anyone wishing to donate to the school can mail checks to P.O. Box 1362, Natchez, MS, 39121 or contact Foggo-Eidt at 601-442-2264.

The school’s Some-N-Special Shop is open the first Friday of each month. The shop has a variety of items, including home decor, books and seasonal decorations.

Pleasant Acre is located at 335 Liberty Road.