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School saved in Sargaçal!
What a week! In an outstanding show of people-power, a determined little group of working parents - Portuguese, Brazilian, Italian, German and English - have managed to save a rural village primary school from the austerity axe for one more year.
Natasha Donn, Edition 698 ( 6 Oct 2011), 
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Last week, things looked very grim at Sargaçal EB1 primary school, just outside Lagos.
Just two weeks into the new school year came the news that the school was being shut down due to the Camara’s “lack of funds to transport” the children daily to a nearby school canteen.
It seemed a fait-accompli. The news was in the national press, letters had been written to parents summoning them to a meeting “to discuss the transfer of the classes” to a larger establishment in the borough, and teachers were crestfallen.
But what no-one had bargained for was the strength of the parents – led, it has to be said, by a woman no-one would want to argue with.
Maria Leroux, wife of a local organic winegrower, remained resolute throughout. “This school is NOT shutting down!”
Of course, another thing the authorities hadn’t bargained for was the intelligence of these parents. It took them no time at all to realise that the “lack of funds for transport” excuse was a total red-herring.
“How will you transport the children of Sargaçal to this new school?” One mother demanded of Mayor Júlio Barroso when he arrived at the school to distribute entirely inappropriate “gifts” of little pink ceramic piggy-banks (“to encourage the children to save in these times of austerity”) while their school was pulled from beneath their feet…
“By Câmara bus”, came the reply.
“So you can afford a bus to take the children away from the village everyday, and bring them back in the evening, but you can’t afford a bus to take them to lunch and back?! Please, tell us what’s the difference? Where’s the saving?”
The beauty of the outcome is that a terrific little school that has enjoyed a strong family atmosphere since filling with “outsiders” over the last five years can now gently come to terms with the fact that time’s up – instead of being catapulted into a situation that no-one wanted or had seen coming.
It’s also proof to everyone else out there that, even when everything seems stacked against you, sometimes taking a stand is really all that it takes.
