Marin public high schools are moving ahead with plans to reopen early next year, even as the state enters a new phase of tighter pandemic restrictions.

“The bottom line is, there is a priority to get kids back to school,” Mary Jane Burke, the county superintendent of schools, said Friday. “What we see in California is a priority placed on seeing that our students return to school in person.”

On Friday, officials announced a new stay-at-home order to start Tuesday and stay in effect through Jan. 4. Marin, four other Bay Area counties and the city of Berkeley said they didn’t want to wait until the region’s intensive care unit bed capacity dips below 15%, the threshold announced by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday.

Burke and county public health officials will conduct a public meeting at 11 a.m. Tuesday to discuss how the order will affect Marin schools. Meeting access information is online at bit.ly/39MfxPG.

If the Marin orders are lifted by Jan. 4 as planned, it is likely that public high schools scheduled to reopen in early January could proceed, Burke said. State officials said last week that once the orders are lifted, counties would revert to the color-coded tiers for virus status as before.

Marin has been in the red tier 2, indicating “substantial” virus transmission, under that system. That  means that schools are able to return to in-person classes. It was not immediately clear whether the same would be true if the county reverts to the purple tier 1, for “widespread” transmission, in January.

“Although Marin has fared better than some other counties in our region over the last few weeks, we know it is only a matter of time before rising case and hospitalization put pressure on our hospitals too,” Dr. Matt Willis, the county’s public health officer, said Friday. “We must act now, and must act together to ensure all hospitals in the Bay Area have the capacity they need to care for our residents.”

In the Tamalpais Union High School District, administrators have set a detailed regimen of protocols for students and staff if can proceed with their in-person hybrid model on Jan. 6 as planned. Tara Taupier, district superintendent, said students will be split into three cohorts instead of two.

“Due to space constraints and 88% of students opting to return in a hybrid model, we will have three cohorts in a rotating schedule,” Taupier told the board of trustees. “The three-cohort model will minimize the number of schedule changes we will need to do to balance classes — either in-person or on Zoom.”

The new plan means that students in the three-cohort hybrid mode will be on campus for in-person instruction only one or two days per week, depending on the class schedules. The rest of the time they will be at home in remote learning, but will be keeping up with their classes via Zoom.

“None of this is ideal,” Taupier said. “None of us would choose to be living in covid or to have our students not on campus. We hope that sometime in the spring semester, if the vaccines are promising, we hope that we’ll be able to return to full time in-person learning before the end of the spring semester.”

In addition to getting daily screenings and wearing masks except while eating, students are advised to dress in layers so they will be ready to lunch outdoors. The district has purchased 14 tents for outdoor lunching, and students will not be able to leave the campus for lunch or eat in their cars.

Students will not be allowed to congregate in close circles. They will need to bring their own water bottles — ideally with straws that can be used under masks — to because campus water fountains have been turned off.

“I think this is a real teachable moment for students in terms of really teaching them to be responsible citizens in this community,” trustee Karen Loebbaka said. “We need to really teach them that your actions matter — you own this.”

Taupier said she hopes students will comply with the virus safety protocols so officials don’t have to shut down in-person classes and revert to 100% distance learning.

“We know that most students really want to be back on campus,” she said. “We’re relying on that to help with compliance.”

In addition to air purifiers, plexiglass shields and a host of other classroom safety measures, the district has purchased extra external cameras to help with the Zoom interface into the in-person classes.

The district is also hiring supervisors to monitor classes where regular teachers are unable to be there in person for medical reasons. Those regular teachers will need to Zoom into the classrooms from home.

Students who are not attending in person will either be streaming into the classrooms on Zoom, or they might be enrolled in a separate online independent study program that has its own class schedules and teachers.

The Tamalpais Union High School District includes five high schools: Sir Francis Drake/HS 1327 in San Anselmo, Redwood in Larkspur, Tamalpais in Mill Valley, San Andreas in Larkspur and Tamiscal in Larkspur.

The San Rafael City Schools district, whose high schools include San Rafael, Terra Linda and Madrone, tentatively plans to bring high school students back for in-person learning in February.

The Novato Unified School District, whose high schools include Novato and San Marin, tentatively plans hybrid learning for grades nine and 10 starting on Jan. 5. The tentative date for grades 11 and 12 is Jan. 11.