Despite Auckland schools remaining open for children of essential workers, only 1 percent showed up on Wednesday.
The city is currently at alert level 3 after the confirmation of four new locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, the first in New Zealand in more than 100 days.
And with another case popping up at Mt Albert Grammar School, it's perhaps just as well parents have made the call to keep their kids at home.
"Principals have jumped back into remote learning for the most part as of yesterday," New Zealand Principals' Federation president Perry Rush told The AM Show on Thursday.
"The interesting thing is we've seen this happen pretty easily, and I think principals have a collective muscle memory of what was required last time around, and it's come pretty easily. I'm pretty proud of how this has worked."
During the lockdown in March, April and May, most students stayed home and did their learning via the internet, using Chromebooks and home computers. An educational television station Papa Kāinga also operated over the course of the lockdown.
The Ministry of Education told Newshub should the three-day lockdown this week be extended, as most are predicting, it might bring the station back.
"We have the option of reactivating our television programmes and lessons if needed, which will include new content,"a spokesperson said.
Rush said the "incredibly low" attendance rate on Wednesday shows "even children of parents who are essential workers did not return to school yesterday".
"It speaks to how seriously the public is taking this."
But teaching online isn't easy. Rush says just two weeks into this school term it "felt like it was week seven, week eight, week nine" already.
"They really have been working since the outset of the school year with almost no break. So it is a concern... But if I know anything about teachers and principals, they're number-eight fencing wire people - they've rolled up their sleeves, they've got this, the muscle memory is there. We'll make this work."
When the country first went into lockdown it was generally believed children were less susceptible to COVID-19, and possibly less likely to transmit it.
Now, while the evidence remains that children are less likely to fall seriously ill and die from the disease, it's known they are more susceptible to serious complications like multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, and can perhaps also act as super-spreaders, carrying far higher loads of the virus than older people.
As a virus unknown to science until late last year, much about SARS-CoV-2 remains unclear - including the potential long-term effects that children may have to end up living with their entire lives.
