Hey, Beaufort County parents: Here’s how your kids can get free eclipse glasses

While folks across the Lowcountry scramble to secure glasses in advance of August’s eclipse, Beaufort County School District students don’t have to worry.

The district is distributing free eclipse glasses to all of its students in advance of the celestial event.

The district purchased 23,000 pairs of eclipse glasses, enough for every student in the district to have a pair, and they have already distributed them to principals across the county. How each school decides to distribute their glasses will be up to them.

“We were able to get a pretty good deal on them,” said Margaret DiPietro, science and STEM coordinator for the district. “We wanted to make sure, since the eclipse will reach about 98 percent here, that all our students are safe. Because if they are here and they are looking at the eclipse, they have to have glasses on the whole time. We purchased them both for the education and safety of our students.”

The glasses being given out by the district were manufactured by American Paper Optics and are approved by NASA and ISO certified, with a reference number of 12312-2 printed on them.

Students in Beaufort County will have the day of the eclipse, Aug. 21, off school. To make up for that, classes in the county will begin two days early. This will serve not just to make up the lost time but to allow science teachers to educate students about the eclipse before it happens, according to DiPietro.

“I think there’s still a percent of the population that is not even aware of the solar eclipse,” said DiPietro. “So that is really our main goal the Friday before it, to make sure that we are talking about it in every one of our classrooms, that we’re not going to let this just pass by. We’re going to take full advantage of this teachable moment.”

This story was originally published August 3, 2017 at 2:27 PM with the headline "Hey, Beaufort County parents: Here’s how your kids can get free eclipse glasses."