Contrary to a common opinion, the French Communist Party encouraged the setting up of the socialist minister Alain Savary’s policy of priority education zones. This paper shows this first through a study of the party’s official news magazine, L’école et la nation (Our Schools and the Nation), and then focuses on the way this policy was implemented in three different and contrasting communist towns. An overview of Aubervilliers, Le Havre and Orly based on the minutes of town hall meetings, the local press and different interviews shows that the relations between local elected officials and teachers were essential to the process, elected officials benefitting furthermore from considerable autonomy.