The Fox Chapel Area School District plans to dismiss students early on Monday, April 8, because of the solar eclipse taking place that afternoon.

The move is being done out of an abundance of caution for the students’ safety, administrators wrote in an email to parents and guardians April 1.

The eclipse will occur during the typical dismissal time for some district students, with maximum totality at 3:17 p.m. in the Pittsburgh region.

The early dismissal times on April 8 will be as follows:

• 11 a.m.: Fox Chapel Area High School

• 11:30 a.m.: Dorseyville Middle and Hartwood Elementary schools

• Noon: Fairview, Kerr and O’Hara elementary schools

Students will be served lunch before dismissal.

To view the eclipse safely, special glasses must be worn because staring at the sun for any length of time will damage one’s eyes. According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, sunlight focused on the retina can cause permanent damage in less than a minute.

On April 8, the peak spectacle will last up to 4 minutes, 28 seconds in the path of total darkness, twice as long as the total solar eclipse that dimmed U.S. skies in 2017.

The moon will line up perfectly between the Earth and the sun, blotting out the sunlight. It will take less than 2.5 hours for the moon’s shadow to slice a diagonal line from the southwest to the northeast across North America, briefly plunging communities along the track into darkness.

Erie will be in the path of totality for nearly four minutes. The Pittsburgh region will see the moon cover approximately 97% of the sun, with maximum totality at 3:17 p.m., according to the Carnegie Science Center. Sunlight will dim for a few minutes here, but the sky will not go dark.

An estimated 44 million people live inside the 115-mile-wide path of totality stretching from Mexico to Newfoundland, and about 32 million of them are in the U.S.

Fore more information about eclipse eye safety, visit science.nasa.gov/eclipses/safety.

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