by Madison Walker

As a new activity this year,  students from the Shanksville-Stonycreek High school art classes are competing against surrounding county schools in PennDot’s ‘Paint the Plow’ contest by decorating a donated snowplow.

The third annual PennDot ‘Paint the Plow’ contest kicked off September 12th for the Shanksville students. The theme this year is “Don’t Crowd the Plow”, and includes Bedford, Blair, Huntingdon and Somerset county school districts in the program.

Sophomore, Madison Trent provided a sketch for the plow that includes the school mascot, a viking, and a brick wall background with the words “Don’t Crowd the Plow” across the wall.

Shanksville high school students have been working on the plow since September 12th and recently completed the project.

Retired art teacher Mrs. Joy Knepp discovered this safety awareness campaign at the end of the 2015-2016 school year and informed superintendent Dr. Samuel Romesburg, about possibly having students taking part in the program in the 2016-2017 school year.

Dr. Romesburg is a supporter of PennDot and thought that this campaign was worthwhile endeavor for his students.

“I’ve always been a big supporter of PennDot” Romesberg stated. “They do a good job maintaining all these roads in the winter”

Newly hired art teacher, Miss. Billie Jo Miller, picked up right where Mrs. Knepp left off, and with the backing of Dr. Romesburg, Shanksville entered in the contest.

“The students really took the lead, and I helped very little. I just directed them,” exclaimed Miss. Miller “They did everything from designing, sketching, drawing, painting, and completing a final project, and they did a really good job with it.”

The ‘Paint the Plow’ program concluded on October 7.

Plows will be displayed at the PennDot building for about a week and the contest voting will begin following the plow pickup on the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDot) Facebook page. Simply like the picture of the Shanksville-Stonycreek School plow to vote.

The Shanksville community will be seeing SSSD’s custom designed plow, pushing away snow in the area once the winter weather hits.

PennDot’s plow safety campaign has been around for three years, and has expanded from just including Cambria county, to involving Bedford, Blair, Huntingdon, and Somerset counties. This program is becoming more popular and helping the accident awareness of plows and cars to schools and communities county wide.