Scattered among the DAC around 1:00 P.M, students and teachers tilted their heads and gawked at the partial eclipse with protective sunglasses on.

For about two minutes and thirty seconds, the sky dulled and the temperature dropped. The moon shielded the sun giving the United States its first viewing of a contiguous solar eclipse since 1979.

However, since the eclipse was partially blocked by clouds during the viewing, students complained they did not get the experience they were hoping for.

“We didn’t really get to see much of it [because] the sun was blocked by a lot of the clouds,” freshman Emily Vossen said. “Everyone was kind of disappointed.”

While the eclipse was partially blocked by the clouds, sophomore Isaac Gardner said he is lucky for the opportunity to have seen a partial eclipse.

“It was a once in a lifetime event and I’ll probably [always] remember just how lucky I was to see it,” Gardner said.

Earth Space and Physical Science teacher James Hale said while he was disappointed Overland Park did not experience the total eclipse, he was still glad he got to see a partial one.

“I was hoping it would be darker even though I knew we officially don’t have a total [eclipse],” Hale said. “I was a little disappointed it didn’t get darker knowing that just across the river, they were experiencing the full eclipse.”

Due to Overland Park’s proximity to the line of totality, the city experienced 99.6 percent of the eclipse. However, hoping  to view the total eclipse, some students chose to not attend school Monday and instead traveled to a neighboring city.

Juniors Calvin Winkler and Ishaan Haldar skipped school on Monday and instead traveled to Holt, Mo.

“I’m really glad we skipped out on school because we couldn’t have gotten to see I can’t imagine being at school after seeing that,” Haldar said. “We would of thought it was cool [at school] but it would have sucked in comparison to what we saw.”

Winkler said he could see the ring around the sun during totality.

“I can’t even express how lucky we were,” Winkler said. “We could see the ring around the sun. Within ten minutes it went from looking like 9:00 [P.M]  to 1:00 [P.M] which was really cool.”