Since 2005 the municipal School-chart has established itself as a tool for the legitimization of strategic planning and for the prospective reorganization of school networks at the municipal level, its most visible effects being the closing of many hundreds of primary schools (also known as 1st cycle, i.e., first through fourth grades) and the building of hundreds of School Centers. Based on current research carried out in fourteen municipalities of Portugal's central region, the present article aims to identify and analyze major trends in the reorganization of the network of primary schools as laid out in their School-charts, with special attention being paid to how the entire process was dealt with in the context of planning. The shift from a centralizing type of planning to strategic planning allowed for the emergence of fresh rationales in the reorganization of the school network, which in turn resulted in a variety of responses on the part of the municipalities.
School-chart; Strategic planning; Municipalities; School network
