The early beginnings of the school can be traced to a volunteer effort by Phoenix firefighters prior to 1989 of providing tutoring classes to local homeless children.
[1] Funding and resources were non-existent in the early days of the program and In an effort to determine whether the small fledgling volunteer effort could be stabilized and expanded into an official program, a group of local firefighters contacted Sandra Dowling, the newly elected Maricopa County School Superintendent .
Realizing that homeless students were not receiving appropriate education services through the local school district, Dowling and the firefighters worked with the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) to change the plight of what turned out to be thousands of children over a twenty-year span.
In 1990 Dowling founded the Thomas J. Pappas School for Homeless Children using the limited resources provided through state funding opportunities, federal grant monies and community donations to develop an official curriculum and provide school facilities for homeless children.
A local Episcopal church housed the first classrooms before growth of the program in less than one academic year quadrupled the number of students requiring services.
Players would don chef hats and aprons and serve meals for major holidays including Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.
Retirees from as far away as Sun City, Pebble Creek and Apache Junction would drive weekly and sometimes daily to be a reading coach for the students.
Students had an opportunity to visit the "birthday closet", take home food from the food pantry on a regular basis or to visit "The Gap", the on-site clothing room that provided clean clothes and a new pair of shoes for the children as needed.
A massive legal and public battle ensued that led to an investigation into certain accounting practices called into question a number of officials related to the school.
However, the public fight took its toll on the district's leadership and teachers, fearing they would not get paid, were taking other job opportunities.