ITHACA, N.Y. — The Ithaca City School District (ICSD) Board of Education voted Tuesday night to cancel classes on Monday, April 8 for the solar eclipse.
Board members said that after weighing the factors, they wanted to give students the opportunity to witness the rare celestial event safely at home. After April 8, the next total solar eclipse visible from the continental U.S. will occur in 2044.
In a statement, the district said it will use one of several unused snow days to give students the day off.
The move comes less than three weeks before the day of the eclipse, leaving some, like board member Jill Tripp, to question whether families would be able to find childcare on short notice.
“I simply can’t agree that we should change a calendar weeks before. […] I think people who want to take their children or other people’s children to [watch the eclipse] should do that,” Tripp said. “But I think we need to keep our schools open.”
Superintendent Luvelle Brown told board members Tuesday he and other superintendents around the region had originally planned to keep their districts open on April 8, but many had reversed course as the eclipse grew nearer.
“We have been engaged in this conversation for more than a year [with superintendents around the region],” Brown said. “Things have changed. Many of the same superintendents and school districts who had vowed to stay open are now closed.”
Brown added he had received roughly 850 emails from families, employees and students on the matter over the course of the past month.
Brown also cited staffing issues as another cause for concern.
“I will say that we have over 60 educators who have already planned to be off on that day,” Brown said to board members. “I’m not saying that it is any particular unit and this is not me throwing anyone under the bus. That’s just a reality. That’s something for us to grapple with.”
Ithaca Teachers Association president Kathryn Cernera said many ICSD teachers, particularly those who do not live within the district, had requested the day off out of necessity to care for their own children. All but one of the six districts that primarily serve Tompkins County have since opted to cancel classes for the eclipse, leaving parents — some of whom teach at ICSD — in the lurch.
“I do not feel confident that if we maintain school, the staff that would remain would be able to provide a safe and educational experience for our students worthy of a once in a lifetime event,” Cernera said. “I think they are going to be triaging and babysitting for the day.”
During a March 12 Board of Education meeting, board member Karen Yearwood said she was concerned that the feedback the district had received at that point may not reflect the perspective of working class families.
“We have parents [commenting] here too, but they’re not a representation of families who are struggling because they have to be at work and they can’t easily take off,” Yearwood said. “It is a hardship.”
Yearwood also said board members had received a number of emails from parents about next year’s calendar complaining that the number of days off was excessive.
Others expressed concern that younger students would be particularly susceptible to eye damage if they were not under closer supervision during the eclipse.
The eclipse, while partial in Ithaca, is expected to begin at 2:08 p.m. and will reach its peak at 3:23 p.m., when many elementary students would typically be on the school bus home.
Staring directly at the sun during the partial phase of a solar eclipse can cause permanent damage to the retina, even through conventional sunglasses or the tinted windows of a school bus.
“We couldn’t keep the leader of the free world from looking at the sun [during the last solar eclipse] in 2017,” one ICSD educator told The Ithaca Voice. “Has anyone making this decision met a 6 year old? They are 100% going to stare directly at the sun when they are unsupervised on a bus and the sun is doing something interesting.”
Organizations that provide summer and after school childcare, like the Enfield Community Council, are now working to determine whether they can offer any last minute programming for the day of the eclipse.
“We haven’t gotten that far yet,” Enfield Community Council president Courtney Bailey said. “But we will discuss it before the end of the week.”
Update 5:12 p.m.: This story was updated to add an interactive map feature.
You can find information about where and when to view the eclipse here. Find out how to view the eclipse safely — and plans to make an “eclipse viewer” — here.