For years, a depressing mix of dying trees and dirt patches have greeted students and teachers at the entrance of James Madison High School near Fair Park.

JIM MAHONEY/DMN

Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert made improving Dallas schools a pivotal part of his mayoral campaign. The latest of his ideas to come to fruition is the landscaping makeover at Madison High, which will be echoed at schools throughout the district. The mayor is recruiting companies to adopt schools and then fund campus greenery refurbishment.

But since March, the campus has been undergoing a change, and now it looks renewed with blooming flowers, paving stones and newly planted trees.

The change is part of Mayor Tom Leppert's fourth education initiative, a plan to have companies adopt the landscaping in front of run-down DISD schools and spend thousands to make them look more attractive for students and surrounding neighborhoods.

"You want to have pride in the schools. You want to have pride in yourselves. You want to have pride in the education you're receiving. ... In a lot of schools, we don't do that," Mr. Leppert said.

Madison is the first school to be adopted and the first to have its new landscaping completed.

Atmos Energy, which has a facility not far from the historic high school, spent almost $50,000 installing a new sprinkler system, pouring fresh concrete and planting greenery.

Also, Atmos employees, along with Madison students and teachers, volunteered hundreds of hours for the project.

The mayor is expected to join Madison students, teachers and administrators outside the high school on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard this morning to dedicate the new landscaping and unveil a commissioned sculpture of the Madison mascot, the Trojan.

Madison is the first of 23 schools DISD has identified to take part in the program.

So far, four companies, Atmos, Deloitte & Touche, Valleycrest Landscape Development and the Gables have signed up to adopt a school, respectively Madison, Thomas Jefferson High, South Oak Cliff High, and William B. Travis Academy.

Mr. Leppert's office and DISD officials have worked together to make adopting the schools simple and to offer a range of investments from $3,000 to $50,000 for companies, the mayor said.

They also have worked to overcome bureaucratic hurdles that some feared could make the program too complex to be practical.

"We all wanted to launch this earlier. There were some challenges getting together different entities that have different requirements," said DISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa.

The school district also wanted to ensure that if a donor agreed to put in landscaping or paint the facade of a school, the district would be able to maintain it, he said.

Dr. Hinojosa added that despite passage Saturday of the $1.35 billion bond program, the schools need private companies as partners.

"When you have 300 sites, there is never enough to do something like this," he said.

Sandra Doyle, director of public affairs at Atmos, said her company was eager to take on the project at Madison, in part because the school is basically a neighbor to its Logan Street facility.

"The whole idea was we would landscape the front to help bring back pride, then we would become partners with the school in other ways," she said.

As part of another program conceived by Mr. Leppert, Atmos will be taking on a Madison student as an intern.

It is also helping fund a scholarship program Mr. Leppert created in an earlier initiative.

Many DISD schools need a face-lift, Mr. Leppert said.

But he acknowledged that something as simple as landscaping isn't going to transform performance at troubled schools.

Instead, it is a small and relatively easy step forward that could give kids some sense of accomplishment and potential.

"This isn't going to change education. These things aren't going to be the lightning that strikes our public schools.

"It just sets the stage, and I think that's important," he said.

Madison Principal Marian A. Willard, who unfailingly refers to her school as "the great James Madison High School," said the landscaping may not seem like a big deal to others, but it is to her students and teachers.

"Basically the building was hidden (by dead or dying trees).

"The concrete was all broken and cracked up. There was no grass out front," she recalled.After she was approached by Atmos and Mr. Leppert's office, she helped form a student committee for input on designing the new landscape.

The result was a paved area with benches where students can sit and read, new concrete that didn't pose the risk of ankle injuries, and a sense that people cared just as much about what was going on outside the school as what was going on inside.

"It does make a difference. It makes a difference in the community, and it makes a difference in the school.

"Now it looks like a school," Ms. Willard said.

Businesses interested in adopting a school should contact the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce.