hey. nice to meet you. (♪) you're so amazing. (♪) it seems ever since covid, we've heard the steady drumbeat of tourism is dead in san francisco, but our reports of its death greatly exaggerated. a just unveiled industry report suggests. money are coming back to the city. joining us live to discuss this. we'll do that in just a little bit. but right now, we

should also tell you today is school becoming optional for american students? why are absences exploding across the u.s, including here in the bay area? and as we mentioned, the doom and gloom. is that overblown? we'll explore the trend for this year. and the boss in the bay, bruce springsteen, has one more show at chase center on sunday, and a relative of abc7 news reporter lyanne melendez will be rocking out on stage. you're watching, getting answers. i'm kristen sze. thank you so much for joining us. before we get to all those wonderful segments, we do want to update you at today's level two storm hitting the bay area. lots of wet roads looking live across the bay area from several perspectives right now. it's not just a rainy start to the weekend, it is a windy one as well. here's abc seven meteorologist drew tuma with your forecast. >> we are at a level two moderate storm on the abc seven storm impact scale today. rain heavy at times, even the chance of a thunderstorm and hail and the winds are gusty. we'll take

a look at our storm concerns. the biggest concern we have throughout the evening is just roadway flooding, because some of these downpours could lead to standing water in areas. the winds are gusty, so trees down possibly isolated power outages on the menu, and lightning risk is a possibility as well as thunderstorms develop. let's talk wind wind advisory currently in effect through tomorrow morning for winds possibly up to 50mph. and that would bring some trees down in spots and also could lead to some isolated power outages. here's future weather as we go hour by hour later on this evening. the showers are scattered in nature, but if you have friday night plans, you do want to prepare for some gusty winds and some wet weather. there's the chance late tonight we could have a thunderstorm popping up. that chance continues tomorrow morning. throughout saturday we're just in and out of the scattered showers before this area of low pressure pulls off to the south and leads to a drier easter sunday. looking at rainfall totals through tomorrow close to the coast, likely an inch of rain in spots. and then those numbers do dip a bit as you head

inland. so, taking a look at the snow forecast, a winter storm warning now in effect through sunday up to 30in likely on our highest peaks, with the heaviest snow falling late tonight and through the day on saturday. that just means highs today. we're in the 50s. it's just a raw, rainy day with those gusty winds. we'll find warmer weather coming our way next week. here's the accuweather seven day forecast level two today. then we transition to a level one for scattered showers. we dry out for easter sunday from clouds to sun throughout the day, and then monday as we begin a new month. april brings sunny, warmer weather with that warming trend for much of next week. >> all right, well, there is a growing crisis in our classroom because there aren't enough kids in them. new research shows how poor attendance is changing our schools. there's more than playing hooky to be considered chronically absent, you have to miss at least 10% of the school year. according to this data compiled by the american enterprise institute last year.

last school year, almost a third of students in san francisco unified were chronically absent in hayward, it's up to 37% of students and in oakland, more than half of students, 53% are chronically absent. joining us live now is nat malkus with the american enterprise institute and the creator of the return to learn tracker that we just showed you. nat, thanks for joining us. >> glad to be here. >> all right. so we define chronic absenteeism as 10% right. missing 10% of school. but there are different layers. and there are a lot of kids also missing. not quite chronic but a whole lot of school. >> yeah. post-covid we saw attendance slip. and look, chronic absenteeism is the percentage of kids that miss 10% of the year. that's not really a magical number. attendance has gone up sort of across the board . and we've also seen that the really severe chronic absenteeism that students that are missing 15 or even 20% of the year have gone up

tremendously uh- across the nation and in california. >> so can i just ask you, obviously, you know, kids have always played hooky to some extent. what about it during the pandemic that made that number jump? and then what about it that made it so it didn't quite fully come back after the pandemic? >> well, it's know, before the pandemic about 15% of students missed 10% of the school year. that's 18 days of school. so that's, nothing to just, wash away easily after the pandemic in, the, the 2022 school year, that was the year of omicron. we saw it jump up to 28. so that's nearly doubling. fortunately, it's come down a bit, but not enough, this past year, in the data that we have, it looks like it's 26. so that's still 1 in 4 kids. that includes kindergartners as well as 12th graders. and we see the increases for a number of reasons, both unexcused and excused absences. >> you mean there are kids

calling in sick more and then there just absences that have no reason tied to it? just like i don't want to go. >> well, nailing down across the country exactly what the reasons are is pretty difficult. the reason that we track chronic absenteeism, both excused and unexcused, is when you miss a lot of school. it's bad for students. students who miss a lot of school in elementary tend to have chronic absenteeism in the later grades. in eighth grade, it's one of the best predictors of whether you won't graduate from high school. and it also predicts long terme outcomes. look, it's not a strange thing to say. being in school consistently is good, but since the pandemic, there's been less determination on the part of some students and parents to make sure that they get back consistently right. >> it's almost like it's become an optional concept, right? sort of like you come if you want to come and somehow the bond has been broken. that that is what we do. that is, you know, that

is the contract, so to speak. so let me ask you, obviously we know for kids they lose out on learning what is the impact and the consequence on the schools and the school districts. well you know, if you can imagine being a teacher where your kids are much more frequently absent, that means you have a lot more work to do, both in terms of taking care of these rapid onset absences, which can't really plan for, and also making sure that your kids are keeping track and that your school or your classroom rather, is on a coherent path to learning. >> so disruption for some cause, disruptions for all. and it makes it difficult to have sort of coherent instructional programs throughout the school year. sure. and that's why we need to turn this around now. >> money too. right. is that a factor too? >> certainly, you know, some of the programs that, it will take to get kids back in school cost money, fortunately, for at least a little, a little while longer yet there's a lot of, covid relief funding still out, still

able to be brought to bear by districts. but time is running out on that. and if this is, to some degree a cultural change, then we really need to turn around before that becomes a new normal. >> yeah, i'll tell you what. really worried me. reading the study. you know, the fact that young kids, you know, not high school students who are just tired of, you know, going to school, but even young kids who are not going, not getting the foundation they need, they're missing school, do parents play a role in this? >> look, parents definitely play a role. and we have gotten a lot of messages, to parents over the pandemic, it's scary. during the pandemic, remote learning is not that bad of a thing. we have computers that and technological applications that make this so it's not so bad. but look, i think we've all learned that, not being in school is not good for kids. and we really need to take a hard pivot. and that really falls, to a great deal to

parents to make sure that your kids are in school. it matters. and it's going to matter to your students. >> well, i wonder how we can account for the fact that san francisco and oakland unified both seem to be seeing some improvement this year in terms of their attendance figures, right? i mean, they really took a dip the first couple of years in the pandemic, kids missing a lot of school days. but, i think we're seeing indications that the attendance is getting better there. any reason why? >> you know, we see different rates of improvement. and again, when you're tracking districts across the nation, there's 14,000 of them. it's hard to know why one will go up and one won't. we do see a lot of variation, but look what we've seen is the increase that we saw over covid, happened to all districts. so it's true that disadvantaged districts had higher rates of chronic absenteeism before the pandemic, but they have higher, much higher rates afterwards. but so do advantaged districts. so the increase that we've seen is very proportional, this is a problem we're seeing across the board.

and it really takes a all hands on deck effort to turn this around. >> all right. so when you say all hands on deck effort, what kinds of things are you seeing initiatives or policies? >> well, you know, across the states there's many things that districts are doing from home visiting, lots of communication means going home to parents, trying to tell parents, look, your student is missing too much school, some of the things that i think we need to see more of are, state leaders, governors, education is one of your primary responsibilities, if kids are not coming back to school consistently, then we're wasting some of the vast amount of money that states are spending on schools and students aren't benefiting. so i really think we need leadership from the top and from, you know, the president all the way down to the principal. we need people pushing kids to get back in school every day, right? >> rather than t

optional. all right. nat malkus, with the american enterprise institute, thank you so much for coming on to share the return to learn tracker. >> thank you. >> the tourists are returning to san francisco. the good news for businesses in the city that rely on visitors and why experts think this year could be even better. we'll break down th are living in the moment and taking ibrance. ibrance with an aromatase inhibitor is for adults with hr positive, her2 negative metastatic breast cancer as the first hormonal based therapy. ibrance plus letrozole significantly delayed disease progression versus letrozole. ibrance may cause low white blood cell counts that may lead to serious infections. ibrance may cause severe inflammation of the lungs. both of these can lead to death. tell your doctor if you have new or worsening chest pain, cough, or trouble breathing. before taking ibrance, tell your doctor if you have fever, chills, or other signs of infection,

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is dead in san francisco, but our reports of its death greatly exaggerated. a just unveiled industry reports suggest that tourists and their money are indeed coming back to the city. joining us live now to discuss this, scott beck, president and ceo of san francisco travel, which is responsible for marketing the city as a travel

destination. hey, scott. >> hey. thank you for having us on. and yes, it is not dead tourism is not dead in the bay area. >> okay. yeah, well, i mean, you did release that good news that your annual conference this week, right, held at san francisco moma. what did you find regarding visitors to the city last year? give us some trends and numbers. >> i think that it's on the rebound. that's the most positive part about what we shared with everyone that markets that are historically really important to us, that being the convention industry, is starting to come back, you saw a strong year in 2023, and in terms of markets that are really important both culturally and economically, china is on its way back, flights are returning to san francisco and all of those things bode well for the future of this incredible city. >> let's break this down. i think i saw last year, 23 million visitors came, right? that is a 5% increase, i think, over the year before. how about spending, spending is up as well. i think we're seeing a great mix of visitors come especially long haul visitors.

that's where the spends at its at its sort of biggest. that's why the china market again is so important to us, when you travel as long as they do to get here, that's where they spend more money. so spending is increasing, up about 22% over the prior year, which is again, a really, really positive trend for our community. >> all right. so then which businesses benefited as a result? i can think of hotels, restaurants, what else? >> i think it's easiest to think of hotels, but 77% of a visitor spend is outside of a hotel. so that's attractions. that is restaurants, that's retail. that's transportation. so clearly hotels are a very big and an early beneficiary of the visitor spend. but it goes deep into our community, and again, one of the great aspects about our city is there's so many places to spend that money. the neighborhoods are as vibrant as i think they've ever been, we have incredible attractions, and those things bode really well for visitors when they come to spend their money. >> so how close are we now to pre-pandemic, pre-pandemic

levels in terms of the tourism? >> we still have a ways to go. so we're we're projecting our industry to fully recover. sometime toward the end of 26, first part of 27, we've got some, some still some headwinds. we still have, you know, less than 25% of pre-pandemic international flights from china are are on the calendar right now. so we've got some headwinds still, but i think we're looking very positive over the next three years. as continued trajectory in the right way. but again, 26, 27 is when we estimate that our industry will fully recover. >> so then what are you doing? are you just marketing to china saying, come back, come back, please chinese tourists? or are you also focusing on other parts of the world? where are all your efforts? >> yeah, so we have, i think, quickly, three things. we do a lot of work in and around the meetings and convention industry . that's a very important part. it really is foundational to this community. and what we do is kind of the 401 k plan, if you will, for the industry, knowing that those events booked long in the future are coming.

it's a very important part of what we do. our sales and marketing efforts towards the group business, we then work very closely with the travel trade industry. so these are tour operators, large scale wholesalers that sell travel, as a package component. and then, as you noted, the leisure consumer advertising that we do and our key markets and internationally, that's china, that's japan, that's western europe, all areas that are, you know, have been historically very, very important to our, the mix here, but also locally, californians are still the biggest number of visitors, and so we do spend time and money, talking to our fellow residents of the state. >> is one of your challenges that you know, that when we think of oracle openworld or those big business conventions, right? salesforce, when they bring like tens of thousands to town, are companies starting to do that again, or is there still less of that kind of activity, well, both are true. there's less than there was pre-pandemic that that's part of our our strategy and focus for this year

is, is rebuilding the presence of those large events. but we have dreamforce. we again as you saw the numbers in 2023 had a very, very strong year, we had dreamforce, we had rsac. we had photonics west, so yes, those groups are coming back. but clearly to, to be operating as we were pre-pandemic, we need to have more of them. and that's, that's what we're doing very aggressively. >> so can i ask you obviously it's great for the businesses, right. hotels, rideshare drivers, even, right. when tourists come, what about spillover effects onto government like cities? the taxes are there benefits there that you're seeing? >> yeah, i think some of the most important aspects of the visitor economy is just that how it impacts positively local government. and every resident that lives here, the great things about visitors is they come, they spend millions of dollars in our community, they pay tax dollars, and then they go home, we don't have to educate them. we don't do things that in terms of service levels that we do for our residents. so

it really decreases the locals tax burden, helps the city offer the incredible things the city does for all of the residents. all of that is enabled at, at a, at a very, very impactful level by the spending of the visitors. >> we have about 30s. but i'd love to hear what you think needs to be done. what would you like to see in terms of initiatives that would help tourism further along and make these things happen, well, a lot of them are are national, we need to get the us government focused on visa reform and getting those visitors who want to come from far away places and ease to get visitors, to get to get visas, to get here. that's going to be really, really important. continued work by our government to open the air, open airspace and get, get, get, get some of the geopolitical issues that are facing us, i think is really important, the city's continued work on creating an environment that is safe and secure is clearly impacting the experience that our visitors are having now and our ability to book future events and get people excited about coming here. so i think those are the things that we're spending the most of our time sharing with,

the, the elected officials at all levels of government. >> all right. scott beck, president and ceo of san francisco travel, thanks so much. >> thank you for your time and interest in our industry. >> all right. you may know bruce springsteen and the e street band are in the bay area for a pair of sold out concerts. what you may not know is they

first was held last night and the second will be on sunday. a member of his e street band has a special connection to abc seven. professional trumpet player ozzie melendez, the cousin of abc seven news reporter lyanne melendez. he join me and leanne today to tell us about his experience on the road with the boss. >> so we have a member of the band who is also a member of my

family. my cousin ozzie melendez, who happens to play the trombone for the e street band. primo. welcome to san francisco. >> thank you. how are you? great, great. >> i'm so glad you're here. i hope you're having a good time and that we're treating you well . >> yes. the food is amazing. last night was our first show, and it was incredible. bruce brought the magic as always, the people had a great time and we do want to get on sunday. looking forward to it for sure. yeah. >> so tell us something about the boss that we wouldn't necessarily know, i think probably everybody knows he's just a great, great, great human being. he really is. he's fantastic. i'll tell you, one of the first shows i did, i joined the band last year, and one of the first shows we did, i can remember i was a little nervous, you know, playing with the boss. sure and i'm up on stage and we're playing hungry heart and

it's on youtube, actually, playing hungry heart. and he at one point, because the horn section is up top and so he starts walking up there and then he makes a left and he's right next to me, and he just taps me while we're in the middle of the song, he just taps me on my shoulder as if to say, it's okay, welcome. and from then on, i, you know, i felt really good. the organization is really, made me part of this family and i really appreciate them. he's amazing. he's just amazing. from the top down. the whole organization is fantastic. >> that's awesome. and i know you guys are performing again sunday night so people can go, but what i want to know is like, does the musical talent run in the family? like, does leanne play any instruments or sing and stuff like that? >> i played the piano for about seven years. okay, but i did want to ask. so you went to the berklee school of music? oh, which is amazing in boston. so how did i mean, how did you, of all instruments pick the trombone? yeah that's funny, because when i was in third grade, my best friend on my block was in fourth grade.

>> he played the trombone. so every day going to the bus stop, i would see him carrying this big case. and he said he played trombone. so when it was my turn, when i when i was in fourth grade, they had this assembly. you know, we all sat there and the older, you know, the older people would come and they would play for us. and i saw the trombone. i went, that's what frank plays. i'll pick that one. so it was really because i was a copycat. i copied frank lopresti and, and i'm glad i did it. and as i kept playing, i, you know, i kept getting kind of accolades. you know, they said that i had talent. so i kept with it. and my parents never said, hey, ozzy, you know, you should try and think of something else to fall back on. they never did. to their credit. they always said, go ahead. if you love it, keep going for it. and thank god i listened to my mom and dad. >> that's awesome. good >> i agree, don't don't go with a fall back, okay? go with what you really love. >> right. and you have, you know, actually big names that you've played with and i'm just going to name a few. j.lo, marc

anthony, willie colon, diana ross, ray charles, billy joel. you know, so my question is, you know, in that industry, when they go to their roller decks and they go under trombone players, i mean, you must be at the top of that list. >> that's what i always wanted when i was in junior high school, my dream was really that if any band wanted a trombone player or a or a writer, you know, for horn, sax and stuff, that, that i would be number one on the list, or at least not, you know, top ten, right? >> right. >> so tell us, it was i was kind of fortunate that i grew up in new york. a lot of aspiring musicians that go to college, they live away from new york, and then they come to new york to try and get work. well, i was fortunate in that i was born in new york, and so i already had a lot of connections. and that's really how you get all this stuff. it's the people standing next to you, the trumpet player here, the sax player here. you play in one situation. it could be a wedding band. you play with

them and then that sax player gets called to go play with tina turner. and then tina turner's musical director says, you know what? we need a whole horn section. can you recommend boom, that's how it happens. that's right. and so it just keeps it just keeps going. that way. >> and so what do you guys do? i always wanted to ask you guys this, what do you do after a concert or are you guys old farts and go go home after a concert. >> we're all fighting. go home. we get up early and try. >> we try and go to the gym. i mean, every once in a while we'll have. it's very hard. after a three hour concert of all that adulation and all that screaming, and we're playing and we're focused, it's very difficult to go back to the hotel and go, i'm going to sleep now. it's nearly impossible. so maybe we'll have something to eat at the bar or a drink. and, but for the most part, we're not staying out till two in the morning. like. like the old days. >> yeah. i mean, because it's like a marathon, right? it's like after this, you got to keep going other cities. so ozzie melendez so nice meeting you. finally, more members of leon's

family, and we're going out to dinner. >> we're going to a puerto rican restaurant. i'm proud of you, leon. >> i've been watching you on facebook, and we've. i'm so proud of you. >> thank you, thank you. we're a talented bunch. the melendez family no doubt. >> it's an honor to chat with you both and have leon, his colleague. good luck on sunday night and enjoy that dinner.

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this is a destination spot. for disney bundle subscribers, hulu on disney+ is here. tonight, the urgent mission to clear the wreckage of the collapsed bridge in baltimore. record travel over spring break and the as tear holiday weekend. and tributes to actor lewis gossett jr. first, the around-the-clock effort to remove the steel of the key francis scott bridge in baltimore. an ahmimada of boats and bargese on the way to help in the recovery effort. one of the largestra