The Charger Yard is a new addition to the unused space outside of Oxford High School. It is made up of the grassy area behind the school in between the gym and the fine arts building. It has been designed as new place for students to socialize and connect with one another. Students are in class for most of their day. The yard was created so students can have a space to simply have fun during a break at school. 

“Kids are not as connected to schools as they used to be. It’s kind of like “I’m going to do my time there and check the box because I’m ready to go somewhere else.” So just trying to get people back involved in school and enjoying their time here because your time here is what you make it and education is hard sometimes and should be fun sometimes,” said Oxford High principal Dr. Bullard.

Bullard has many future plans for the Charger Yard, including a place for a concert, or a picnic for students.

“I hope for it to become a space where we can just enjoy it. One of the things I hope to do at some point is, if possible, have a stage out there so that we can have people who create their own bands or small parts of the orchestra or anybody who wants to come out there and play music for people while we eat lunch,” said Bullard.

The school’s first test for the yard was the Halloween festival this October. Each sport or club set up a booth for younger kids from other schools to come and trick-or-treat. 

“And so when we were having that discussion, that’s when we decided that we wanted to do the Halloween festival to see if anybody would come just to see if it would be fun. I thought it was fun and a lot of people thought it was fun, so let’s do some more things like that.”

According to Bullard, the school plans to host an event on April 26th to celebrate cultures from all around the world. People would be able to set up booths with foods, clothes, music, and other things that symbolize their culture.

“Just being a regular public school, I’ve never been to a school like this. It’s something that we don’t notice or celebrate and so we’re gonna try to have a world cultures festival so that people can bring you know the course culture. All that means is food, music, dance and what they wear like what their traditional clothing is, so if people from different cultures wanted to set up booths they could do that.”

There are also plans for future campus beautification. Bullard wants to add to the interior of the school, such as bigger pictures in the hallways, replacing the cork boards with a more modern replacement, and color indicators for the hallways as a safety precaution.

“We’re also thinking about painting like a marker or indicator in each hall with a different color so that when somebody says, “there’s an emergency” or someone says, “somethings happening” we’re all asking which one is that because they all look the same so to try do some color coding in the halls.”