 Teachers from across the region met this morning at the East Kentucky Expo Center for the opening of the Title I educational conference. Pike County School Superintendent Reid Adkins says it is very important for Eastern Kentucky teachers to have access to professional development resources right here in Pike County. We started off the morning talking about the economic situation in Eastern Kentucky and how important our educators are to our students. Right now they're the most important group of people we deal with. During the two-day conference educators from across Eastern Kentucky are able to share experiences and network with other teachers as well as attend breakout sessions on topics that hit close to home. So they're able to adapt it in ways to meet our needs and our classrooms here in Eastern Kentucky just learning the resources we can use how we can expose these to our students that's what I like it's a down-home professional development that really connects for us as Eastern Kentucky teachers. With a downturn of the coal industry creating challenges for thousands of Eastern Kentucky residents educators know the children are being affected which was another reason Superintendent Adkins and his staff wanted to bring local teachers together to figure out ways to combat the problems unique to this area. You can get quality professional development Central Kentucky in several different areas we try to bring good quality PD to Eastern Kentucky. The conference titled preparing for excellence will wrap up tomorrow afternoon reporting in Pikeville for EKB news I'm Shannon Deskins.