School buff: Spanish mothers strip to save bus service

A group of Spanish mothers have disrobed for an erotic calendar to raise money for a school bus for their children. In less than a month the desperate housewives managed to raise enough cash to pay for the school run for the next three months.

The scantily-clad mothers appear in the calendar scaling cliffs, pushing prams along dirt tracks to illustrate the 6km walk their children were forced to take to school every morning.The risqué idea emerged when a new measure introduced in July cut funding to the school bus running in the Monserrat district of Valencia in the East of Spain. According to Spanish law the government is obligated to provide transport if students live more than 3km away from the school. However, the new measure says the distance has to be calculated in a straight line, this meant that Valencian school ‘Evaristo Calayatud’ was no longer eligible for a school bus.“We have to scale a mountain and climb down a cliff to get to the school. On foot, using the most direct route it’s 4.5km, if you walk on the road it’s six,” said one of the mothers, Silvia Lucas to the Spanish press. Following the introduction of the measure the mothers decided that they needed to do something to raise money whilst at the same time “giving the politicians a slap in the face.”A little more than a month after the launch of the calendar the mothers managed to amass enough money to pay for a school bus for three months for the 83 children left without transport.However, it was not all plain sailing for the group of women who were ejected from the town center by police for illegal selling of the calendars. But, as Silvia Lucas highlighted, “we were not selling them, we were collecting donations.”She went on to say that the calendar is not to everyone’s tastes in the neighborhood, but there was no other choice.“A lot of people tell us that we could have organized a community meal and not the calendar, but that would not have made nearly enough money. Our husbands are happy with the result and proud of our achievement” said Lucas, adding that she had done it for her children.