PITTSBURGH -- Some Pittsburgh-area school districts are planning to keep students home during the April 8 solar eclipse, which is expected to occur around student dismissal times.
Pine-Richland is canceling classes for the day "to allow families the opportunity to view this historic event safely from their homes," officials wrote in a letter.
The eclipse is expected to happen during student dismissal and "the potential is significant for students to be tempted to view it without proper safety precautions while exiting the school building or while getting off of the school bus," the letter states.
South Fayette School District will dismiss students early and those attending schools in the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh will move to remote learning for the day, officials confirmed.
The Pittsburgh region will see a partial eclipse, meaning the moon will cover a portion of the sun, causing the sky to slightly darken. But the event is expected to start around 2 p.m., with the maximum eclipse, or when the moon blocks the most amount of sun at a specific location, occurring at 3:18 p.m., according to the Carnegie Science Center. That means the eclipse will fall when several area schools are being dismissed.
And in order to avoid severe eye injury, protection such as eclipse glasses are required during partial solar eclipses because there is no period of totality when the moon completely blocks the sun, something that would be difficult for school and bus officials to monitor during dismissal.
The decision by local school leaders to close or move to remote learning mirrors national trends, especially in districts in the path of totality. So far, districts in Texas, Indiana, Ohio, New York, Vermont and Maine have announced school closures the day of the eclipse. Pennsylvania schools are also closing, including at least 11 in Erie County and Corry Area School District in surrounding Crawford County.
Locally, officials at Pine-Richland have been working with experts at the Space Weather Prediction Center to figure out the best way to proceed. The day will not need to be made up.
Similarly, Michelle Peduto, the Diocese of Pittsburgh's superintendent of schools, said the organization will use a flexible instruction day, which allows districts to provide virtual instruction to students when school buildings are closed.
"We are being cautious to protect the safety of our students and staff," Peduto said in a statement. "Students will be given assignments to work on at home that day."
Some schools at South Fayette also get dismissed around the time the eclipse will occur, spokeswoman Jennifer Donovan said. This is at least the second time in recent years the district has decided to keep students at home for a solar eclipse. South Fayette in 2017 delayed the start of school by a day because of safety concerns associated with a solar eclipse that for Pittsburgh caused the moon to cover 81% of the sun.
"We didn't want to put that responsibility on bus drivers and everything about making sure that the children were safely not looking into the sky when that was occurring," Donovan said recently. "So it just seemed for the best safety of our students that they be at home when that occurred."