Principals are isolating themselves and making teachers work in separate bubbles in an attempt to slow the spread of Omicron in their schools.
Principals spoken to by RNZ said it was inevitable children would have to learn from home at some point in the next few months because of the virus.
More than 120 schools were managing Covid cases at the start of this week, up from just 14 the previous week.
Like many principals, Pat Newman from the Tai Tokerau Principals' Association said he was living in daily expectation that one of his pupils or teachers would come down with Covid.
"I've had two false alarms, one the first day, one the second day. To be quite honest I'm sitting here waiting for someone to come and say 'you've got a case here' and it will happen," he said.
Newman said principals were under extreme pressure and some of the rules in force under the red traffic light setting were not workable, such as requiring masks for children in Years 4 and above.
Whangārei's Manaia View School principal Leanne Otene said she had organised her staff in a way she hoped would minimise the impact of Omicron when it arrived at her school.
"We're all in bubbles and I've got two administration teams so if one team goes down there's another team to run the school. I'm pretty much isolating myself from everyone so I can stay on site and run both hybrid and distance learning programmes," she said.
Otene said she was not expecting to close her entire school, but at some point some children would be learning from home.
"I think it will be rolling, that's what I anticipate. As some staff are perhaps isolating or off because they've got Omicron another lot are coming back so I can see that happening with both staff and students. We don't know what that's going to be like and we really in schools are just playing it day by day," she said.
Papatoetoe High School principal Vaughan Couillault said he dealt with Covid cases last year and again just last week.
He said the approach now was very different to last year when an entire school might be considered casual contacts of a case and required to get tested.
"That doesn't happen now. Casual contacts are just required to self-monitor and aren't required to test," he said.
But he said cases would still cause disruption, especially when teachers were unable to come in to work.
"We've all got phased approaches to how we will manage if our staffing levels get to low. Do we send a year level home, do we shut the whole place down, do we just cancel period five and give every teacher a non-contact in the afternoon so that they're covering for everybody in the morning. Any combination of those could happen depending on how things escalate," Couillault said.
He said the community seemed to be more confident about dealing with Covid than last year, probably because vaccination levels were very high.
Auckland Primary Principals Association president Stephen Lethbridge said he was expecting primary schools would see more disruption for younger children.
"There will be times when a number of children have to isolate and I would suggest that's more likely from Y0 to Y3 where masks are not mandated. From Y4 and up we might see less whole class isolations and things along those lines and just close contacts of students isolating," he said.
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