On Tuesday, May 27, 39 teachers and between 390 and 585 students will participate in ‘Toona Tune Up, an annual effort to clean up Altoona by upkeeping areas of the city. This year, physics teacher Samantha Knepp is in charge of the effort after the founder of ‘Toona Tune Up, Robin DeShong, retired at the end of last school year.
“It’s a really big project,” Knepp said. “I just hope that I can do things half as good as what Robin DeShong did, and I’m hopeful that it will turn out well. It’s been a lot.”
Interested students can contact one of the participating teachers to become a part of a team of 10 to 15 students.
“I enjoy the experience of ‘Toona Tune Up so much because it is community service for a great cause, which is to better our community by picking up litter, weeding and so much more,” senior Skylar Rutherford said. “It’s also a great opportunity to hang out with friends and wind down before the end of the year.”
Each team works on painting items such as benches, putting new wood chips down in parks, cleaning up leaves from the last fall and picking up litter, among other tasks. The activities are dependent on the area of Altoona they’re assigned to.
“There’s a gigantic list of things that had to be done,” Knepp said. “I’m still in close contact with Robin DeShong, who has been helping a lot with a lot of things. Maybe the most labor intensive thing that we’ve done is we had to go to each of the parks and the different locations around Altoona and actually see what those spaces need in order to get them looking nice and tidy and better than where they are now. That was probably the biggest thing so far, [and we’re] currently working on a lot of paperwork.”
While Knepp was planning this event, she realized what impact ‘Toona Tune Up has had on the community.
“There was a guy, whenever we were scouting out parks, that stopped us and actually was thanking us for doing these things,” Knepp said. “He was like, ‘and you’re coming back this year, right?’ People are honestly thankful that we’re making things look nice.”
DeShong started the ‘Toona Tune Up effort to allow students to do something positive in the community when the school year begins to wind down. Knepp hopes to continue DeShong’s legacy.
“I hope that [students] get some sense of pride about the community, just the idea that if they’re the ones that are putting forth effort to make it look nice, maybe they’ll continue the trend of trying to keep it looking nice—an overall sense of pride for our community,” Knepp said.
Knepp is glad she can give back to the community and encourages others to do the same.
“I think that it’s a great project,” Knepp said. “It is a really big undertaking, but it really goes back to the idea of having a sense of pride in the community and just giving back and giving students the opportunity to participate in something big.”
