 Appalachian Wireless offers forward pay. No contract, no credit check, no problem. Plans start in 1999 a month and include unlimited talk and text or take it to the max with unlimited data plus for only $89.99 with 50 gigs of high-speed data because we are you. We are Appalachian Wireless. Tuesday, January 18th, House Bill 44 passed unanimously in the House and is on its way to the Senate. The bill would give students access to excused absences for mental health days during the school year. 97th District Representative Bobby McCool sponsored the bill after local students brought the issue to his attention. It came to me from Cole Butcher from Johnson Central High School. Cole is a very bright young man and he brought this to my attention along with Cameron Gillian from manual high school and asked about could we consider a bill for this and they had done their research several other states have similar bills in place and so they they've done a lot of the work a lot of the groundwork. McCool hopes that this bill will help destigmatize mental health and give students more access to mental health resources. The goal is just to get them to have conversation about if they're having some issues and hopefully that can lead to connecting with a professional that can help them with their situation. But mental illness is a health issue and it shouldn't be treated as anything different. While the bill will let students use an excused absence for mental health, it does not change the amount of days a student can miss overall. Everybody sees the value of it so I've not heard any negative toward it at all. There wasn't early on some hesitation about could this be misused or abused and the answer to that is no because it doesn't change any structures that the school system is already having in place. The bill is currently waiting to be passed by the Senate Education Committee. For Mountain Top News, I'm Brianna Robinson.