Thomas J. Pappas School

The Thomas J. Pappas Schools were a series of related alternative schools located in the Phoenix, Arizona area. A part of the Maricopa County Regional School District, the Thomas J. Pappas schools provided primary and secondary education to homeless children in the area. They were named for Thomas J. Pappas, a prominent Phoenix businessman known for his strong support of homeless causes, who died in 1989. The schools closed in 2008 following several years of controversy and legal issues surrounding the schools' administrator, Sandra Dowling, the Maricopa County Superintendent of Schools.

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. Originally held in a shelter and later moved to a hotel, the first classes were attended by only 8 students.

Funding and resources were non-existent in the early days of the program and In an effort to determine whether the small fledging 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. The move to a former car dealership that was leased and then renovated for use as a school for grades K-8, Dowling's program becoming the first school for the homeless children in Phoenix and evolved into a national model.

In response to continued growth in attendance a new school was constructed in 1997 serving grades 1-6 and the existing former "car dealership" was building was converted to a middle school. The concept was further expanded by the founding of the Tempe Thomas J. Pappas Elementary School in nearby Tempe in 2001. While originally housed in a strip mall, the satellite school moved into a new facility constructed in 2004.

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