The students, including Natalie Kinney, Andrea Conner, Alexis Adam, Ellie Arnone, Miranda McKane and Emily Kanouff, began painting a mural Monday morning in the stairwell leading up to the police department — located at the town hall on South Work Street. The wall now depicts the police department’s patch and badge, along with several stars and stripes.

The group was led by Aleida Foulk, the art teacher at Falconer Middle-High School, who was approached by William Ohnmeiss Jr., chief of the Ellicott Police Department, about creating a mural.

“I kind of hand-picked these kids knowing that they have taken the advanced classes and know how to paint and kind of what I would expect from them,” said Foulk, who previously taught in the elementary school and has known the students for years. “In the beginning of the year we started talking about doing a mural, but we were hybrid still. We still couldn’t really figure out how we were going to get together, when we were going to be getting together. But as the year progressed, we started to meet a little bit and just kind of talked about ideas. We kind of sketched up some things and they got really excited.”

The group of six students, known as the “mural team” and entering their senior year in the fall, created tie dye shirts and decided “this is how we wanted to end the year,” Foulk said, “because our year started off so strange and a lot of kids were really isolated. And as art students, some are in chorus or band or sometimes on sports teams, it felt really nice to be able to put together a team of kids who were going to work on something really big. They were really excited to do something that was community based and try to get more involvement between the police department and our schools.”

Many of the students are in Honor Society, and creating the mural will help them obtain volunteer hours. That’s a win-win for Ellicott police, noted Ohnmeiss, who was amazed by the group’s skill and their pace.

“I’ve been wanting to do this for years anyways,” Ohnmeiss said of having a mural painted outside the police department. “Their talents are just incredible. It’s more than we could have ever hoped for, and again, it’s just a good community interaction with the kids.”

Short on free time outside school, Adam said taking art classes has allowed her to focus on herself. “I feel like I don’t have to worry about other things going on,” she said. “In class I’m able to work on my own things and do stuff like that. That’s always nice.”