Schools have been busy preparing for the restrictions of the red Covid-19 setting on the last week of holidays before they reopen.
Under the setting, students in years four and up must wear masks, along with all teachers and staff in classrooms.
The principal of Jean Batten Primary School in Mangere East, Nardi Leonard, told Checkpoint she had lost a bit of sleep since the announcement of Omicron's arrival in the community, thinking about how to handle predicted staff shortages.
"The predication is at its peak I could be 50 percent down on teachers. I suppose to equate with that though, we could also possibly be down 50 percent on students so the demand at the school with physical face-to-face [learning] may not be as high."
The school has also considered partial online learning/teaching for those who are required to self-isolate but were not sick.
"A teacher could be at home and not showing any symptoms, they could be a close contact, can we ask them then to partake in online learning? I have teachers who would... I'm just trying to pre-empt worst case scenario where if I'm really low on teachers."
But Leonard said the main point was that under the new Covid-19 Protection Framework, schools remained open.
The school has spent this week focusing on how best to follow the rules under the red setting, such as for masks.
"The school will have masks onboard. That's an area of debate, there's the recommendation for specific masks to be worn now, those are expensive I suppose when you look at the bigger picture for schools where you've got 400-500 children.
"But also ... they're young so flipping off a mask, then putting it down and running away then wondering where it is is very common for our young students.
"The big picture for schools at the moment is this last week is going to be spent doing a big think tank with teachers on how effective we can be on all the recommendations."
It has been a week since five to 11 year olds became eligible to get the vaccine and nearly a quarter of them have had one or are booked in to receive their first vaccination.
Leonard said she did not have figures on what the vaccination uptake among her school's community was but the board was considering whether they should be a vaccination site.
While her first instinct was that it was a good idea, she said she was worried about becoming a target for those who were not keen on vaccinations.
On the other hand, she said one option could be that the school could offer to take whānau to nearby vaccination sites if transport or time was a barrier.
