Home Sweet School

By Jessica L. Sandham

Photographs by Benjamin Tice SmithPhoenix

The first strokes of daylight have just begun to color the Arizona sky purple when a bus from the Thomas J. Pappas School turns the corner and wends its way down a stretch of Van Buren Street notorious for hookers and hoodlums. The bus chugs past an adult-video store and a rent-to-own furniture outlet, and stops to pick up children in front of seedy, inhospitable accommodations with names like the Motel Arizona and the Flamingo Inn.

Such establishments may not be typical bus stops, but Pappas is not a typical school. All of its students are homeless, and the bus they board each morning whisks them from a rootless world of eviction notices and cramped quarters to one where every child who wants one is guaranteed a hot breakfast and a warm hug.

Since its founding a decade ago with a handful of pupils in a church fellowship hall, Pappas now serves 730 students in grades K-10 in...