 At Audiology Associates of Prestonsburg, you can live your life the way you want and find the freedom of better hearing. With 40 years of being in the hearing care industry, you'll experience patient care that is specific to you with exceptional follow-up care that ensures your hearing and balance needs are being met. Audiology Associates at 1428 Northlake Drive in Prestonsburg. Governor Andy Beshear joined local leaders Tuesday, March 7th to break ground on the new Johnson Central High School and Career Technical Center in Painesville. Oh, this is thrilling. This is not only the construction of a brand new Johnson Central High School complete with a new career and technical program and center. It's also, we believe, the largest construction project in the history of the county. It's going to create huge numbers of jobs while they are building this school, but it is also going to attract jobs to the community. This is a big dream. It's going to move this community forward in really special ways. The manufacturing skills gap in the U.S. could result in 2.1 million unfilled jobs by 2030, according to a study by the Manufacturing Institute. The new school will help close that gap and attract manufacturing to the region. Well, this is going to be a jobs magnet in Eastern Kentucky. Right now, the companies want a site and we've used our PDI program to help sites here in Johnson County and across Eastern Kentucky. But they also ask, where's my workforce coming from? Take them to a brand new career and technical center overlooking this incredible vista that you see right here, and they will know exactly where their workers are coming from. We have announced major investments, the largest new jobs programs in numerous counties across Kentucky, and they have pointed time and time again to the career and technical programs in our public high schools. The current Johnson Central High School is over 50 years old and was built to host 715 students. It currently hosts over 1,000. We pride ourselves on providing opportunities for every student, no matter what their career pathway may be, and we have done that for so many years at Johnson Central High School. Our current building is 54 years old, and so we've been providing those opportunities in an aged building. And we cannot describe the excitement we have to be able to provide these opportunities in state-of-the-art facilities now, in classrooms and in labs, to really prepare students for what they're going to be facing once they get out of school. Phase one of the project is anticipated to take 20 months to complete, and phase two is anticipated to take two and a half years with an estimated completion day of 2027. I mean, the kids are pumped for this. Every single day someone will start a conversation like, oh, aren't you so excited? We don't have to have our choir concert at the sip anymore. We can have them at the school or, you know, we can host district tournaments better than we ever have before. Everything like that. The kids are so excited, even though most of them won't be here for it. They're just like me. They're so excited for the rest of Johnson County and the future of Johnson County. Reporting for Mountain Top News, I'm Brianna Robinson.