Over 70 IL School Districts To Close For Eclipse

ILLINOIS — More than 70 school districts in Illinois will not be in session Monday when a total solar eclipse makes its way through the state, according to the Illinois State Board of Education.

The eclipse will be visible over roughly 128 miles in southern Illinois, with totality entering the state at the Missouri line at 1:58 p.m. near Carbondale and following a diagonal trajectory to exit the state and continue into Indiana at 2:06 p.m. over Mount Carmel. Crowds of up to 200,000 people are expected to travel to the prime viewing area in the southern part of the state.

In the Chicago area, the moon will cover about 94 percent of the sun at the peak of the eclipse, which will reach maximum totality at 2:07 p.m.

Most of the school districts set to not be in attendance Monday are outside Chicago and its suburbs, although the south suburban school systems of South Holland School District 151 and Country Club Hills School District 160 do plan to have the day off, according to the state board.

As of Wednesday, 76 districts had declared a not in attendance day for Monday, board Press Secretary Lindsay Record said in an email.

"Districts have been advised against preemptively declaring an e-learning day in anticipation of the solar eclipse," she said. "The purpose of e-learning days is to replace emergency closure days. The foreseeable increase in traffic or other anticipated challenges preceding the solar eclipse does not meet the criteria of an emergency that warrants an e-learning day."

Some 32 million Americans live in the path of the eclipse’s totality. In the United States, the path of totality extends from Texas to Maine, but each of the 48 continental states will see some of the solar eclipse, which occurs when the moon slips between our bright star and Earth.

The total solar eclipse starts in Mexico, entering the United States in Texas and traveling through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, as well as small parts of Tennessee and Michigan, before entering Canada in southern Ontario through Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton before exiting continental North America on the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland.