like i say like i say ♪ ♪ i told ya you mend it bogus operandi ♪ ♪ my motive's so handy nothing but bogus operandi yeah ♪ ♪ nothing but bogus operandi yeah nothing but bogus operandi yeah ♪ ♪ nothing but bogus operandi yeah nothing but bogus operandi yeah ♪ ♪ thank you! america! [ cheers and applause ] ♪ this is "nightline." >> byron: tonight, where are the kids? >> i would ask for help, and i would just like -- like i'm dumb or something. >> millions of students

chronically missing from school, many even quitting. >> i had a kid last week tell me, how could i learn when i'm just trying to live? >> the growing crisis in america's classrooms. >> we're losing way too many children. >> what's stopping them from coming to school? >> i ask this respectfully, is the system broken? the lady bird diaries. an intimate portrait of the former first lady, an eyewitness to history in her own words. >> seeing blood, her husband's blood. >> byron: more than 100 hours of rare audio featured in a new documentary giving a candid look at one of america's most famous couples. and back in action. jeremy renner posting his incredible progress just ten months after his nearly fatal snowplow accident.

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with the freestyle libre 2 system know your glucose level and where it's headed. no fingersticks needed. manage your diabetes with more confidence. and lower your a1c. the number one doctor prescribed cgm. freestyle libre 2. try it for free at freestylelibre.us ♪ ♪ >> byron: good evening. thank you for joining us. this week, america celebrates education week. across our country, there are great teachers, educators, and students. but in too many communities, the problems are even greater. according to experts, schools are in the midst of a crisis. truancy and absenteeism at record highs. tonight we go to one city where the crisis is will, the headwinds to strong, and the will to win is relentless. this part of our series, "the

american classroom." hartford, connecticut, called the insurance capital of the world. world-class private schools to match. that's one hartford. we rode around the other. our tour guide a native son, a product of hartford public schools. >> so this is a ride-along. this is when we take people out in the community to show them kind of what we do. but normally for me, this is me doing straight engagement. >> byron: street engagement? >> yeah, so normally i would drive to the neighborhoods, find young people, engage them in conversation. >> byron: at age 49, diego lopez bears the scars of his schooling. what happened to your finger? >> i was shot. >> byron: you were shot? >> i'm a four-time gunshot victim. >> byron: where? >> all over my body. >> be specific. >> i was shot in the stomach, the chest, the back, lower extremities, blew my finger off,

the arm. it's like nine bullet holes. >> byron: a ninth grade dropout, a former member of the latin kings, lopez spent ten years in a connecticut state prison. he changed and became a counselor. today with one daughter in college, another who will attend soon, he's focused on helping children. the hard streets of hartford, his office. we're in the trenches? >> the trenches, at risk. >> byron: you show up here. i don't see security, i don't see a weapon, i don't see a kevlar vest. you're doing in some way what the police do. >> 100%. yeah. >> byron: diego works with teen on this the shy side of success. >> what's up? byron pitts. >> byron: many of them high school dropouts like amanda. >> junior high dropout. >> byron: you dropped out in the 11th grade? may i ask why? >> covid.

>> byron: did school give up on you, did you give up on school? >> kind of both. >> byron: thank you very much. >> how do you tell someone that education is important when they're worried about getting killed? or gang violence and all this other stuff going on in their life? we expect our children to learn when they don't even know that they're going to live? >> byron: as you see it, what's broken in schools? >> i don't think our kids think education is as important as it was before. i think our schools are just straight-up just failing our kids. >> byron: those are hard truths in hartford. in cities and poor communities across america, many desperate children feel like no one cares that they're in school, so they stop going. >> am i working hard enough? should i just give up? >> i wouldn't be as motivated as i was and i would start skipping. >> going to school started to become very -- like a big struggle for me when i started to struggle with mental health.

>> byron: children reaching a breaking point. since the pandemic, students have disappeared from schools in alarming numbers. over one-quarter of all u.s. students k-12 miss 10% or more of school. they're considered chronically absent. >> the education system is working for some, not for others. covid-19 really, i think, exacerbated a lot of the challenges that we saw around educational inequality, disparate outcomes among different groups of children. >> reporter: in our nation's capital, 48% of students chronically absent. california 30%. connecticut 24%. educators feel the burden. i ask this respectfully. is the system broken? >> we in schools are taction tasked with solving for a lot. >> byron: the fight for the future of america's children is at a crisis point. in 2021, there were 2 million dropouts. >> we're losing way too many children. they're either not showing up or they're leaving early and really

not having any opportunities beyond that. >> byron: nationwide, for millions of students, a typical school day is filled with too many obstacles. from issues with transportation, caring for loved ones, to depression, anxiety. students are missing school. >> the education system is not working for black and african american students. it's not working for students who may speak a language other than english. it's not working for students with disabilities. it's not working for students who live in poverty. and it's not working for students who don't have an advocate, who can make sure their needs are being met. >> byron: every day, these peace builders as they're called go out into hartford, meeting young people where they are. >> are you in the hospital? >> byron: offering job training, providing basic needs like food, clothing, shelter, friendship. >> so the question of the day today is, what is an obstacle that keeps you from going to school or causes them to drop out of school? >> i think one of the biggest

issues is trauma. we live in a traumatized environment. and our schools are not trauma informed. >> byron: compass has been working with 17-year-old rahim hodges for a year. are you in school? >> no, not right now. >> byron: you dropped out? >> yeah. >> byron: why? >> to be honest, when i came back from covid, it's just like -- felt like school wasn't for me. >> byron: were you absent a lot? >> no. i would show up, but i just ain't participating. >> byron: what grades did you get when you were in school? >> cs, ds. when i did try, i would get bs and as. i felt like they gave up on me because, like, when i -- when i would try, i wouldn't get the help i needed. >> byron: give me an example. >> they would make me feel like i was stupid. i would ask for help, and they would make me feel like i was just like -- like dumb or something. >> byron: this time last year,

genesis luciano had dropped out of school. why? >> i was homeless. so it was just a lot of stuff going on for me. and i just said i didn't want to do it anymore. >> byron: how old were you? >> i was taken. >> byron: were you a good student, a bad situation? or were you in a bad situation and not really that good a student? >> i was a good student in a bad situation. >> byron: do you think the school didn't see you? >> the school didn't understand me as much. >> i think it is difficult, unfortunately, right now, to find joy in school. schools have become places where teachers are stressed, are overworked. for students, some of the content is increasingly irrelevant to them. we are now at a moment where we need to determine what the future of public education is in this country. >> byron: in many parts of the country, programs are being tested to help students like genesis, strategies to improve grades and attendance. from door knocking in los angeles -- >> we knocked on 8,000 doors.

>> byron: to signs reminding kids to come to school in alabama. >> good morning. >> good morning. >> byron: to a truancy court in nashville that tries to find solutions for each family based on the obstacles they face. >> you want to try to encourage them to tell their story of what's going on. >> i think although local communities are doing a lot to increase student attend ant, we really have to spend more time understanding root causes. >> byron: a problem that affects all ages. truancy can start young. >> one thing that we found early on was, our kindergartners had a 25% chronic absenteeism. that was my first wakeup call. >> byron: no one knows the stats or the stories better than leslie torres rodriguez, superintendent of hartford public schools. born in puerto rico, raised in hartford, she's a product of the system she now runs. >> a 5-year-old cannot get to school on their own. we knew that there were familial challenges.

housing insecurity, unemployment, health inequities that exist. >> byron: one school in her district, michael d. fox elementary, is helping to solve that problem by bringing health care straight to its students. like this school medical clinic. equipped with a full dentist's chair, even staffed by a physician's assistant. >> school health centers most definitely work. if a child goes to an appointment outside of school, they miss an entire day or a half day. if they come here for the same complaint, they're out of class for 30 minutes. >> byron: because of this clinic, m.d. fox says they've seen an improvement in attendance. >> if we've got them healthy, we've got them at the best of their ability to focus on reading or learning math or whatever it might be. >> byron: down the hall a food pantry. >> a lot of the systemic challenges that happen, all of that plays out in the classroom, in our schools. and we have to solve for it.

we're not going to turn our back on our students. >> byron: in that regard, what grade would you give yourself? >> i would say we can always do more. >> byron: i need a grade. >> oh my goodness, on the spot. average job. >> byron: your voice said average job -- >> sadder. sadder. >> byron: genesis had her fair share of obstacles. now she's enrolled in an alternative school in hartford. during our interview, genesis' peace builder, haley jones, grew emotional as she quietly watched. >> y'all crying over there? >> byron: we asked her to join us. why are you crying? >> because this is years, man. this is -- this is years. this is, like, your heart. this is -- i have, like -- this isn't about money, this is an investment of what i know, i pour everything that i could into her. >> byron: why give so much? >> because i owe my community that. honestly, it's so real, though.

this job is like -- i would do this for free, i say it all the time. >> byron: jones says she could have been like genesis, in but in her hards, "i was born in the right zip code." >> it's just not her fault. the world needs her here, out of prison, to become a mother. the world needs to hear from her. there's many more kids just like her. i can't believe you got me crying, i can't believe it. >> byron: where might you be without her? >> i don't know. i would have been outside. i would have been in jail. i would have been -- nothing. >> byron: in communities large and install like hartford, there are countless children without hope, without school systems that work. there are also adults who see them and their potential. those adults are driven to act, often moved to tears. when is the last time you cried? >> i cry every day. i cry every day, man.

i cry every day, i cry because i'm alive. i'm always thinking about the next day, about the next great thing. >> byron: when was the last time you cried? >> probably yesterday. i see myself in our students regularly. and that -- that gets to me. that gets to me. >> byron: our thanks to the good people we met in hatted for and across the country. we found counselors and educators who pursue their professions like good parents. they show up every day, love their children hard, even when it's difficult. when we come back, lady bird johnson, a revealing new documentary on the former first lady. somedays, i cover up because of my moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. now i feel free to bare my skin, thanks to skyrizi. ♪(uplifting music)♪ ♪nothing is everything♪ i'm celebrating my clearer skin... my way.

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♪ >> byron: she's an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work has appeared on major platforms like espn, netflix, hbo. dawn porter is here to discuss her latest film, "the lady bird diaries." welcome to "nightline." >> thank you. >> byron: 123 hours of her recordings, recording herself. how did you get access to it, and what made you decide to make it into this documentary? >> abc had done this podcast based on the 123 hours. and that was based on a book by julia swag. julia had been doing research in the johnson library and stumbled upon these tape. they'd been in the library for decades. abc came to me and said, "do you think it could be a film?" >> byron: i watched it. it's powerful. it's wonderful. it's relevant to the life we're

living in right now, in these times. we share an audience clip. we talks about in her own voice when john f. kennedy was assassinated. >> by that time, mrs. kennedy had arrived, and the coffin. mrs. kennedy bled, blood, her husband's blood. i asked her if i couldn't get somebody to help her change. she said, "oh, no, i want them to see what they have done to jack." >> byron: i didn't realize the johnsons were there. also, one of the wonderful details that you capture is her humility. even in that moment, she describes everyone who was there but herself. >> you know, that is so observant. no one has pointed that out before. and that is so kind of quintessentially lady byrd. what people also don't remember is the reason that the kennedys

were in texas, they were going to visit the johnsons. johnson and kennedy had a very fractious relationship. and this was supposed to be a new start. not only is it not a new start, but texas is the state that kills jfk. so lady bird kind of carried that with her for a very long time. >> byron: also, you give great detail about what a great partnership, what a great love story they had, and the fact that she would grade his speeches. the president of the united states, leader of the free world, his wife would say, okay, i'm going to give you this grade. take a look at that clip. >> listen for about one minute to my critique or wait until tonight? >> yes, ma'am, i'll do it now. >> during the statement you are a little breathless. there was too much looking down. when you're going to have a prepared text, you need the opportunity to study it a little more and read it with more conviction and interest. in general, i'd say it was a good b-plus. how do you feel about it?

>> i thought it was much better than last week. >> byron: not only does she give a critique, she gives details. right? she gives specifics about what, in her mind, worked and didn't work. it talks about depression. it talks about the power of love in their dynamic relationship. what, if anything surprised you? >> there were so many things that were surprising. because people know lady bird at all, they know her for what people call beautification efforts. but really, lady bird was an environmentalist. the other thing that she was doing while she was in washington, d.c., she was very focused on the poor neighborhoods in washington, d.c. and of course, washington, d.c. is primarily a black neighborhood, a black city at that time. she was going into some of the poorer black neighborhoods in d.c., making sure there were playgrounds and there was nature. she was a very big believer that nature was a really important, calming element for all people. >> byron: dawn porter, thank you so much for joining us. continued grace and success to

you. >> thank you so much for having me, it's great to be here. >> byron: "the lady bird diaries" is now streaming on hulu. when we come back, jeremy renner's remarkable recovery and you know i didn't. it makes my running shoe look like new. it's amazing! wow, it makes it look like... i don't have kids at all. it's so good, it makes it look like i have magical powers! with 80% less scrubbing, mr. clean magic eraser makes cleaning easy. also available in sheets! ah mornings! cough? congestion? i'm feeling better. all in one and done with new mucinex kickstart. headache? better now. new mucinex kickstart gives all-in-one and done relief with a morning jolt of instant cooling sensation. it's comeback season. my skin has been so much smoother so much more hydrated.

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. ♪ >> byron: finally tonight, an action star is back in action. jeremy renner posted on instagram today with an update on his recovery. the actor in a video skipping and jogging up his driveway just ten months after nearly being crushed to death by a giant snowplow. he broke more than 30 bones in the accident and suffered a collapsed lung and pierced liver. in his post, renner noted that this was his first attempt at the activity and said he's filled, quote, with joy, hopefulness, and gratitude, telling fans, "you are my fuel." good for him. that's "nightline" for this evening. catch our full episodes on hulu. we'll see you right back here same time tomorrow. thanks for the company, america. good night.