I don't other areas did but I live in the path of totality for the eclipse that happened in April and the schools were all shut down that day. A lot of it was our of fear that people flooding into the area to watch the eclipse would overwhelm the areas infrastructure. If estimates were to be believed from all the areas in my state I heard were supposed to be getting an influx of eclipse watchers I think there was supposed to be about 14 billion people looking for hotels around me.
I can remember watching a partial eclipse in the early '90s from my elementary school... except we were only allowed to watch it from inside of a lame cardboard shadow box of liability and fear. It was as underwhelming as it was safe.
Where I live, they typically only do that for the more total eclipses, like 80+% coverage. It makes sense to me that the dad might have heard about a lower coverage partial eclipse and realized he had exactly the right tool.
We had a partial eclipse where I live and it was a school by school basis on if they took the kids out. They gave excused absences to anybody that wanted to take their kids out of school for it. That’s what we did.
My kid played video games for 90% of the time. It was partial, so it lasted hours, and it was cloudy af, so I didn’t blame him.