Old Pueblo Archaeology Center’s Fresh Start
by Allen Dart, RPA
Executive Director, Old Pueblo Archaeology Center
On September 9, 2008, the Governing Board of the
Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) gave a fresh start
to the not-for-profit Old Pueblo Archaeology Center’s
educational programs in archaeology, history, and cultures.
At its regularly scheduled meeting on that date, the TUSD
Board approved an agreement under which the school district
would provide a new facility from which Old Pueblo was to
begin offering our programs starting in January 2009.
Our New Place
Old Pueblo Archaeology’s “new digs” are located at
TUSD’s Ajo Service Center (the “ASC”) at 2201 W. 44th
Street in Tucson. Situated just a few hundred feet west of La
Cholla Blvd., the ASC is a 10-acre property in the foothills
of the Tucson Mountains, surrounded by park lands. On its
south and east, the ASC property is bounded by the City of
Tucson’s 168-acre John F. Kennedy Park. Immediately to the
ASC’s west is an unspoiled Sonoran Desert vista preserved
in Pima County’s Tucson Mountain Park. At approximately
20,000 acres, Tucson Mountain Park is the largest natural resource area owned and managed by a local government in the U.S.
Lead-Up to an Agreement
I think it’s an interesting story that led up to the Tucson
Unified School District Board’s agreement with Old Pueblo,
so I’d like to digress to share it with you. In the fall of 2007,
TUSD was going through heart-wrenching decisions about
how to cut its expenses so it could live within an annual
budget that had recently been reduced drastically because
of a downturn in Arizona’s economy. The District weighed
many cost-cutting options, including a recommendation
from its then-superintendent to close four schools. Another
TUSD facility that potentially was on the chopping block
was its renowned Cooper Environmental Science Campus,
known more affectionately as “Camp Cooper” by the many
children and educators who had taken advantage of the
Science Campus’s outstanding environmental and cultural
programs through the previous decades (including my own
two children).
When my wife Janet Chumbley (a librarian in TUSD)
informed me in October 2007 that Camp Cooper was being
targeted for possible closure by the District, I contacted
TUSD to propose an Old Pueblo Archaeology Center-TUSD
partnership designed not only to keep Camp Cooper open,
but also to reinstitute its archaeology learning program,which had been the inspiration for our“Old Pueblo Educational Neighborhood”
children’s learning programs that we
had begun ten years earlier (see sidebar
about Tucson Unified School District’s
Cooper Environmental Science Campus).
Part of our proposal was to take over the
management of Camp Cooper, to lower
the District’s expenses so that the Cooper Environmental Science Campus (Camp Cooper) could remain open.
As a result of our 2007 inquiry
to TUSD, one of its central office
administrators (Lisa Long), its Regional
Science Center Coordinator (Marleen
Kotelman), and others evaluated Old
Pueblo’s education program offerings and
contracting experience. This caused TUSD
to recognize the contributions that Old
Pueblo Archaeology Center has made in
educating TUSD students and other youths
about the heritage and modern cultures of
the Southwest since 1994, when Old Pueblo
was incorporated in Arizona. Seeing the
value of our programs, the District offered
us a counterproposal: They invited Old
Pueblo to move our entire facility onto a
school district property from which we
could offer even more archaeology and
culture education programs than previously,
to complement the environmental programs
being offered by the Cooper Environmental
Science Campus (which, fortunately, has
continued to operate since those dire days
of 2007).
As our negotiations progressed, TUSD
provided Old Pueblo with a list of its
vacant properties for us to look at, in case
one of those properties might be a suitable
new location for us. We narrowed the
choice down to two parcels in the western
part of Tucson, upon which TUSD’s Lisa
Long turned over the responsibility of hammering out an
agreement to Bryant Nodine, one of the school district’s
planners.
The Agreement
Realizing how difficult and costly it would be to
develop one of TUSD’s vacant-land parcels from scratch to
accommodate Old Pueblo, Bryant came up with the idea of
having Old Pueblo share the existing facilities at the District’s
Ajo Service Center, a regional facility that houses many of
TUSD’s Gifted and Talented Education (GATE), physical
therapy, and occupational therapy teachers.
Bryant arranged to have TUSD move an 1,800-squarefoot
modular classroom building onto the grounds of the
ASC for Old Pueblo’s exclusive use, and to provide Old
Pueblo with a half-acre of adjacent, fenced land on which
we could construct a new simulated archaeological dig site
for our flagship “Old Pueblo Educational Neighborhood”
(OPEN) children’s learning program.
The arrangement also allows Old Pueblo to utilize other
support spaces at the ASC, including four staff work cubicles
in an existing ASC office building (Building C), the ASC’s
central ramada, its parking area, and its restrooms facilities.
Old Pueblo agreed to this proposal, so a five-year agreement
was drawn up, and it was approved by the School Board this
past September.
The Exchange
TUSD determined a fair monthly rental rate that the
District could expect to charge an outside organization for the
use of an 1,800-square-foot portable building and shared use
of the existing Ajo Service Center facilities, and calculated
what the total rent should be for a five-year lease period.
However, instead of having Old Pueblo Archaeology Center
actually pay cash rent, the District requested that Old Pueblo
provide TUSD with archaeology and heritage education and
assessment programs sufficient to match the projected rent
estimate. Specifically, the five-year lease worked out with
TUSD specifies that Old Pueblo will provide its “OPEN”
simulated archaeological site-excavation, field-trip, learning
programs; its OPENOUT in-classroom learning programs; its
guided tours to archaeological sites in southern Arizona; and
other educational services to be negotiated with the District;
and Old Pueblo will provide TUSD with cultural resource (archaeological and historical site) surveys of up to five
properties that are either owned by TUSD or being considered
for purchase. Already the properties to be surveyed for
cultural resources have included the undeveloped portions
of the Ajo Service Center and another TUSD property near
Mission and Irvington roads where TUSD wants to construct
a new school.
In addition to providing these in-kind services of monetary
value, Old Pueblo also had to move, store, and again move all
of our furnishings from our old Ina Road offices to the new
ASC facility; install electrical, phone, and internet service,
including new local area networks inside the two ASC
buildings that we are using; transport all of the high-quality
topsoil from our old OPEN2 simulated dig site, and the 22
railroad ties that enclosed that dig site, to the new property
for construction of the OPEN3 site; purchase materials for
and construct the new OPEN3 simulated archaeological dig
site itself; and construct a new 40 by 30 foot shade structure
to protect the new OPEN3 simulated dig site and its users.
The Costs
Obviously, the set-up of this new facility comes at
substantial cost to Old Pueblo Archaeology Center. Therefore,
Old Pueblo asks for support from our members and the
general public in the form of both monetary and volunteertime
contributions to help defray the costs of our move and
to finish getting the new facility up and ready for use by
children and the general public. Persons who wish to donate
funds using Visa, MasterCard,
or Discover credit cards can do
so by contacting Old Pueblo
at 520-798-1201 or info@oldpueblo.org.
Donation checks can be
made payable to Old Pueblo
Archaeology Center (or simply“OPAC”), and can either be
dropped off at our new location
(2201 W. 44th Street, Tucson)
or by mail to PO Box 40577,
Tucson AZ 85717-0577. Stock
donations can also be accepted,
as can cash, of course.
The Fresh Start
There have been some
construction and organizational
delays in getting started, but Old
Pueblo Archaeology Center’s
first education program at our
new TUSD Ajo Service Center
facility was held on February
11, when 26 fourth-graders
in teacher Patricia Young’s
class at Rio Vista Elementary
were the first to experience a
simulated archaeological dig in
the new OPEN3 site. (Rio Vista
School is in the Amphitheater
Unified School District;
TUSD’s agreement for Old
Pueblo’s joint use of the ASC
allows Old Pueblo to conduct
programs for schools in other
districts, as well as for private
and charter schools.) Our
first ASC program for adults
was the “Third Thursdays”
monthly free lecture program
on February 19, at which I
presented a program about southwestern rock art.
For more information about Old Pueblo’s fresh start
at the TUSD Ajo Service Center please feel free to contact
me at 520-798-1201 or adart@oldpueblo.org. We’re looking
forward to many more programs at the new Old Pueblo
Archaeology Center, and hope you’ll join us for a lot of
them.
The Tucson Unified School District’s Cooper
Environmental Science Campus – “Camp Cooper”– was the inspiration for Old Pueblo Archaeology
Center’s “Old Pueblo Educational Neighborhood”
(OPEN) program.
Although Camp Cooper traditionally has focused
on environmental science learning, it also used to have
an archaeology education component that included a
simulated archaeological dig, which was conceived
and established by Marc Severson (one of Old Pueblo’s
founders), Sharon Urban (a former Arizona State Museum
archaeologist, now with the Harris Environmental Group
in Tucson), and others. Around 1994, the same year Old
Pueblo Archaeology Center was incorporated, TUSD
had to close Camp Cooper’s archaeology program to cut
costs.
Shortly after the Camp’s archaeology program demise,
many TUSD teachers called Old Pueblo to ask if we
offered a similar simulated archaeological dig learning
program for children. Their calls were the inspiration for
Old Pueblo to begin our OPEN program in 1997 with the
establishment of the “OPEN1” simulated archaeological
dig education program site, at our first office facility on
Fort Lowell Road.
When Old Pueblo moved to a new location on
West Ina Road at the end of 2003, we established the“OPEN2” simulated dig learning site there, and now that
we’ve moved to West 44th Street we have just created
our third incarnation of the simulated archaeological dig
experience, named “OPEN3.”
The OPEN endeavor also includes our “OPENOUT”
(Old Pueblo Educational Neighborhood Outreach)
program, in which Old Pueblo’s educators go directly
into schools to provide presentations about southwestern
archaeology, history, and cultures.
