NEW YORK --- The teachers passed the principal's office with a simple request on Wednesday afternoon, pleading with Wayne Tanaka to slip out of school with the kids, hustling home to the television.

"Do you mind?' they kept asking me," Tanaka said. "They said, 'You know where we're going.' "

As they walked out the front doors, out in the desert sun, the name on the sign across the sparkling new school gave it away: Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy. Long before his epic U.S. Open quarterfinal loss to Pete Sampras, 6-7 (2), 7-6 (2), 7-6 (2), 7-6 (5), the principal, counselors, teachers and 150 students waited until the morning announcements were over, clasped hands in the school yard and had a moment of silence to send goodwill to Agassi in New York. This is a public school, so they can't call it a prayer.

Just understand: Agassi is a guardian angel for these kids, a son of Las Vegas offering a chance for salvation to these kids growing up in the most dire of circumstances. This is a public school, with private school advantages, a validation of its namesakes' vision. He's invested millions of dollars into the school and promised millions more. This is a grand undertaking, practically unprecedented for an athlete, and Agassi has poured his heart and soul into it.

"I just had to do a court deposition over the telephone today," Tanaka said. "It was a child custody case. I had to explain why a father didn't want his son to be moved out of this district so he could keep going to school here. This is something special here."

They're so much Tanaka wants to tell Agassi about the opening week of school here, so much he wants him to see when he returns to Vegas. Agassi never wanted to leave the Open so soon, but Sampras met Agassi's brilliance on Wednesday night and raised him. When they had the first day of school a week ago, Agassi had a hard time keeping his mind on his match at the National Tennis Center.

"It was definitely on my mind," Agassi said. "To see the kids pull into school would have been a great thing ... But I think there's something quite right that while that school opens, I'm out here at the U.S. Open working hard."

When he gets back to Vegas, Tanaka wants to tell him the story of the mothers standing with the kids in the school yard on the first day of school. He's been an educator for 29 years, and never did he witness 20 and 30 parents sobbing so hard over the possibilities awaiting their kids within the walls of the school. They just stood, and sobbed, and stood with a local reverend, saying a prayer for the man, Agassi, responsible for it happening.

Within two years, they're going to construct a middle school on the grounds. Within four, there will be a high school. They started with grades three to five, but they'll add one every year until this is a fully functioning assembly line, spitting the kids into colleges, into lives they never dreamed possible in this hardscrabble part of Vegas, well beyond the glitz of the Strip.

"The greatest way to affect a child's life who doesn't have opportunities is to teach them how to teach themselves," Agassi said.

Now, he goes home to Vegas, where there promises to be a standing ovation waiting for him, long after the balls stopped bouncing for him at the U.S. Open.

Adrian Wojnarowski is a columnist for The Record (N.J.) and a regular contributor to ESPN.com.