California Facing School Attendance Crisis
"It's about hearing families, and listening to them, and really understanding like what is going on," San Francisco's John Muir Elementary School Principal Shawn J. Mansager told KCBS.
Mansager shepherded his school into a model for how to reduce truancy.
The school offers childcare starting at 7 a.m.
The Justice Department report found that 210,000 K-5 students missed 10-percent of the school year.
"Given that we are now in a state where we are the creators of the technology that changes the world, I think we can do a better job, and continue to do a better job adopting the technology that allows us to track the data," California Attorney General Kamala Harris said.
Low income African Americans are disproportionately absent.
Board of Supervisors President London Breed says she's lived the study, knowing kids in and out of school growing up.
"Now, sadly, I seen those same people down in the Tenderloin who are on drugs; those same people, sadly, locked up behind bars," Breed said.
This was the fourth annual study on elementary school truancy.