The secondary school Dr. António Carvalho Figueiredo advised, last Tuesday, the parents of the students who would have physical education on Thursday and Friday that the teaching activity would not take place due to the closing of the Feliciano Bastos pavilion for the XXI congress of the PCP.
In the email sent by the class directors to the parents, to which the DN had access, it is said that “on November 26, 2020, due to the closing of the Feliciano Bastos pavilion to hold the 21st PCP congress, there is no Physical Education class “. Identical mail followed for students who had classes on Friday. The pavilion was assigned to the party meeting on Thursday, the day when it began to be prepared to serve as a cafeteria for congressmen, and on Friday, the date on which the Congress of Communists began.
Those who did not like the cancellation of the teaching activity were some of the parents. To DN, the father of one of the students who was without physical education class says he does not understand the cancellation at a time when school days are cut (the next two Mondays) and when schools live at the risk of having to suspend teaching activity in person due to the pandemic. It is at a time when assessment is approaching in the various curricular disciplines, namely in physical education.
“I was disgusted with this situation,” says this father, who asked for anonymity, since his son attended that school. An indignation shared by other parents, tells the DN, along with the fear that assemblies would form near the school, given the presence of 600 delegates to the communist congress. What will not have happened, says the same source, with no record of concentrations of people at the establishment.
Even though it is inserted in the school space, Feliciano Bastos pavilion is managed by the municipality and has an autonomous entrance – precisely the one used by delegates to the PCP congress. What usually happens in these cases is that the pavilions are assigned to teaching activity, remaining in the municipality’s availability for extra teaching activities, but outside school hours.
In order to hold its XXI congress, the PCP reserved both the pavilion of the secondary school and the facilities near the Loures Volunteer Firefighters for the meals of the participants in the meeting, given that Loures is one of the municipalities at high risk of contagion from covid-19 and, to that extent, subject to mandatory curfew and the closure of catering establishments from 1 pm, during the weekend.
The issue of canceling physical education classes had already been raised by the PSD of Loures, which questioned the City Council, led by Bernardino Soares (of the PCP) about the closure of the pavilion. The Social Democrats later issued a statement complaining of the lack of response from the municipality, considering that “it is not acceptable for hundreds of students to be deprived of their normal physical education classes and that, to attend other disciplines, they have to cross a few meters with the approximately 600 congressmen “.
Present at the congress, the mayor of Loures, Bernardino Soares, told the Lusa agency have “no comment to make” on this subject.
