They have a saying at Blossom Gulch Elementary School. Those who do the morning shift feel as if they have put in a full day by 8:15 a.m.

It starts 45 minutes prior. The first school bus swings right, off a two-laned street, carrying youngsters back to school after a long weekend. Sweeping into the school's parking lot, past rows of cars and pickup trucks, it creaks to a stop where Jennifer Haliski waits.

"Good morning ... Hi," she says cheerily and leans up into the bus's open doorway.

As principal of Coos Bay's biggest school nestled in a homey neighborhood on the edge of downtown, Haliski made it her mission this year to know all her kids. At Blossom Gulch, there were about 540 of them.

"Morning Andrew. Thanks for taking your hat off."

"Hi! Hi! Hi!" chirps one first-grade-sized girl, hopping down the steps and skipping off toward the school's front doors. Haliski's voice is the first many children hear as they jump down from their buses and out of lined-up minivans and passenger cars.

She's the person who straightens their backpacks and tousles their hair. She's the one who bends down inches from a little person's face and quietly listens to fears and frustrations.

"Research shows students are more likely to remain in schools where someone cares about them," Haliski says. (See sidebar, Page A7.)

For the former kindergarten teacher it's clear the compassion bubbles from a deeper place than the intellectual interpretation of logical studies. She makes it a priority to connect to her students, particularly those having a hard time, with adults who talk with them every single day at school.

And still, there are times when a student gets lost.

When Ina Rose was taken into state protective custody on March 4, she was not enrolled in public school. The 8-year-old girl had attended elementary schools in Coos Bay and North Bend - at least sometimes. But on the day that the small, bony girl, weighing 31 pounds, was taken to Bay Area Hospital, the day she was diagnosed with malnourishment, the state considered her a home-school student.

No public school teacher had seen her in class for at least nine months.

According to school records, from Sept. 18, 2002, through Nov. 8, 2002, Ina Rose was enrolled in kindergarten at Madison Elementary School. She went to first grade at North Bay Elementary School for about a month from Sept. 22, 2003, until Oct. 31. Next, she went to Bunker Hill Elementary, where she was listed as a student from Nov. 25, 2003, through the end of the school year in June 2004. (See sidebar, Page A1.)

Whether she actually was in school on specific days is not public record. And here, Ina Rose's public school attendence ends.

"A parent could say, 'I'm home schooling my kid and that would end that,'" said Gene Evans, communication director for the Oregon Department of Education.

In Ina Rose's case, she was signed up for home schooling through the South Coast Education Service District in October 2004, according to ESD records. Once a family turns in papers for home schooling, the state assumes such families are actively educating their children.

"We don't know that," said Sharon Smith, who oversees support services in ESD's Coos Bay office. There are "very, very lax laws in Oregon."

A child's guardians receive a home-school enrollment form detailing the state school attendence regulations. Once they sign a form agreeing to comply, a school district is notified the child is home schooling. Public agencies essentially go away. The law is purposely tailored for parents who don't want government involvement in their children's education.

"We believe in good human nature, that parents are doing the right things for their children, but we don't have any objective evidence to show that's true," Evans said of the estimated 15,000 home schoolers in Oregon.

The only times ESD is required contact with home-schooled children is during testing at the third-, fifth-, eighth- and 10th-grade levels, Smith said. If a child does not take a benchmark test within a month or two of the deadline, ESD notifies the former school district. That child then becomes the school district's responsibility. ESD goes away. (See sidebar)

Ina Rose may have been studying hard during those months as a home-schooler. Her family may have been working with her on basic reading, writing and mathematics, as would be typical for a second-grader. But, according a report made to state Child Welfare workers and contained in court documents, Ina Rose was kept naked most of the time, locked in a house, unable to go outside.

Kids don't just miss school when they're sick.

For teachers and principals, the task of figuring out why they are gone and how to get them back requires intuition, even investigation and action.

Sometimes the family isn't getting them up. If a Blossom Gulch child needs an alarm clock, Jennifer Haliski gets her one.

"I know that seems like a simple solution, but that's all it takes," she said.

Sometimes children stay home to take care of younger siblings. And sometimes students miss the bus when there's no one or no car to bring them to school. In those cases, Haliski has them trained to call her. She'll send a taxicab or drive out and pick them up herself.

"Transportation can be a real barrier if a child lives in poverty," she said.

Then there are those children, or families, who just don't have good connections to school. It shows in absences.

In Coos Bay schools, each teacher checks off on a computerized class list every morning of who's there and who's not. The teacher hits send and delivers it into a database in each school's main office. Haliski checks up daily on students she's worried about. Monthly, she reads through the lists of lates and absences looking for inconsistencies. Then she contacts the parents.

"I start with a phone call. Sometimes they just need an ear," Haliski said.

And sometimes, Haliski gets into her car and goes to their home.

All children between the ages of 7 and 16 must attend school - public, private or at-home - full time. Oregon law requires it. State law also requires districts employ a truancy officer. But the days are gone when a truancy officer cruised streets or knocked on doors, looking for kids who should be in class. Nowadays due to budget cuts, school secretaries and principals largely fill the school-attendance tracking role.

"Our hands are more tied than they used to be," said Principal Arlene Roblan at Madison Elementary.

Principals treat the matter almost as an issue of public relations. No one's dragging students into school. They talk to parents. It's nonconfrontational.

The Coos Bay School District actually has a flow-chart for dealing with chronic absenteeism. If parent conferences and home visits don't get a child back into school, the district can ask the Coos County District Attorney's Office to try. The DA sends parents a letter. From there, parents can be cited into court.

For Roblan and other principals, though, the problem is best tackled at school. Roblan's school calls home each day a child is absent to be sure the student is OK. A lot of them walk to school, so it's truly a safety check, she said. And the approaches vary. Bunker Hill Principal Dale Inskeep said he, too, tries to develop a relationship with parents. But his priority is making school a place where children want to be.

"That's the proactive piece and a little bit reactive, too, if you notice a pattern," Inskeep said.

The reality is, when a child misses 10 consecutive days of school, she is dropped off a school's enrollment list. State law requires it. The state funds schools on a per-student basis.

And at times, principals have called Child Welfare. Roblan estimates she makes the call an average of once a year when she's very concerned, but that in no way guarantees state caseworkers will get in touch with a family. Truancy doesn't rate against reports of abuse or neglect.

"It's a low priority because nobody's life's in danger," Roblan said.

Until recently, Coos County ranked No. 3 of 36 counties in the state for child abuse and neglect, so said Children First For Oregon, a nonprofit children's advocacy group. A report released in late May by the Oregon Department of Human Services dropped Coos County's child abuse ranking to No. 16 statewide for 2004.

Still, 50 percent of Coos County's children in foster homes are younger than 6. As of last week, there were 190 children living in foster care in Coos County. In 2003, local Child Welfare workers helped 304 children who were victims of abuse and/or neglect. Physical abuse. Sexual abuse. Emotional abuse. Lack of medical care. Abandonment.

"There are some children we don't find," said Nancylee Stewart, the Child Welfare agency's program manager on the South Coast. "We can only respond to what we know about."

Many abused children are not in school, because many, if not the majority, aren't old enough. They live in apartments, homes, motels and even cars. And if they aren't in school, they often are invisible.

Ina Rose lived in the Mt. Terrace trailer park in Greenacres, where mostly decades-old single-wide trailers are planted side-by-side, 20 or so feet apart along a pot-holed gravel road. Some neighbors never noticed her in the year she lived there. But they did notice when the Child Welfare agency's white Jeep rolled to a stop outside Ina Rose's home around the first of March.

"When we all got together and we all got talking, a lot of people here in the trailer park only had seen two kids," said neighbor Vera Berry. "They never knew there were four."

They never knew Ina Rose existed.

For Principal Haliski, the work to keep children in school starts in the summer. School secretaries print out school registration forms for all students from the previous year. By the end of registration the third week in August, they will begin calling families of the students who haven't registered. If previous phone numbers don't work, they'll call emergency contact numbers and others to track down children.

Some will have moved. Some will have changed schools.

"I can't think of a case this year where we called and didn't know where a child was," Haliski said of Blossom Gulch's just ended school year. "We have a pretty good track record."

That seemed to be Haliski's goal each day of the year, as she stepped through her school's double doors early each morning to welcome her kids. And they came, capering down the sidewalks or in the seven lumbering buses, mini-vans, small cars and pickup trucks. Come September, Haliski's work will start all over again, greeting the grade-schoolers as they arrive to start a new year. And Haliski and her staff will try to be sure they can account for each and every one.