 The Appalachian Advantage plan is the simpler, better way to get the phone you actually want instead of paying hundreds of dollars up front. Simply pay the taxes up front and a few extra dollars on your monthly bill and get the phone you really want. It's called the Appalachian Advantage and is available at the Appalachian Wireless. During Congressman Hal Rogers' visit to the U.S. 23 Country Music Highway Museum, two local elementary schools presented projects as part of the Community Problem Solving Future Problem Solving Competition. In the Junior Division, State Championship, both Paintsville Elementary and WR Castle advanced to international competition, Superintendent David Gibson commented on the victory. You know, to be able to win our second consecutive state championship, being able to take our young people and they're, as you can tell, they're incredibly intelligent, incredibly driven to be a model of servant leadership for our community and be able to go out and show that it takes compassion, it takes drive, it takes a lot of creative thinking to be able to put these programs together and our kids are going to go onto the international level and be able to represent Eastern Kentucky Appalachian on our school system incredibly well. During the event, Mountaintop had the opportunity to speak with students about their projects and how they impact the community. So this year we learned a little bit more about what goes on in the foster care system and that it's a bigger problem than most people think of. So we decided that we would reach out to local foster care systems in our community and we would donate supplies to them so when children come into the foster care system they have more of the central items they need when getting transported from house to house. Our project is Project Stops, students teaching online personal safety. We're trying to combat cyber bullying and the negative effects it has in our community. So steps we've took to combat, we put stops boxes in all of the classrooms, grades 3rd through 6th and this gives students a way to anonymously report cyber bullying and stuff that's happening inappropriately on the internet. Also included in the presentation was Central Elementary's STLP team who presented their idea for helping drug abuse victims. Our project is a STLP project. We're trying to stop opioid addiction or at least address it. We do this because there's a high amount of percentage in our area of people that do drugs and some people that after recovery if they don't take it seriously they can die of drugs. And lastly with two schools going to internationals for judging, Gibson says he hopes others see that the community is invested in their future. Well the future of Appalachia starts with our schools, it starts in the classrooms, it starts with our kids and being able to put together programs that number one to help our area, help our community first will show our community that we're invested. We want to be here and by putting programs together that kids want to be a part of they will come into our region, come into our schools, come into our community and it's an economic development issue when we start bringing people into our region to come to good schools, to good programs like our CNPS. So what they're doing is a step in the right direction in solving some of the economic problems that we have in the region. From Mountain Top News, I'm Joel Chorjol.