Covid-19 has impacted students and teachers in many ways, and CMR Principal Kerry Parsons said the changes have made a big impact on everyone in the school community.

“The bell schedule has lots of advantages,” Parsons said about the block schedule that was put in place in August 2020.

With a block schedule, C. M. Russell High School students have four classes a day, every other day, but each class is an hour and a half long. Parsons said that block schedules were looked at close to 10 years ago, but were never adopted.

After the school closure in March 2020, a considerable number of adjustments were made for students to return in the fall.

“The block schedule was implemented to reduce passing time and cleaning between classes,” Parsons said.

Although students only have four classes a day, it has been harder for some of them to stay on top of things, he added.

Temporary shutdowns of the school — along with quarantines — have made a big impact on students and their grades.

“At the end of the first semester, we had over double the class fails,” he said. Parsons said it is impossible to know if the problem was the new block schedule because of shutdowns, quarantines, closures, masks, along with the stress and anxiety that has come from the pandemic.