On Oct. 9, the Sun Journal editorial jeered area schools for not registering events in observance of International Walk to School Day (Oct. 5). That editorial read, in part, “But there’s no reason every school in Maine could not have organized an at-school activity that day to highlight the importance of walking and biking, if not to school, then to other locations, for exercise or for just plain fun.”

There are many reasons schools may not have participated, among them: multiple competing priorities around academic instruction; insufficient staffing to organize and implement safely; lack of instructional time to meet current mandates; allocating sufficient time to feed students breakfast and lunch daily; insurance liability concerns; existing school routines provide adequate physical activity for students

The schools are not responsible for the lack of safe walking/biking routes to school; we are. Instead of jeering our school staff for not prioritizing an event conjured up by a North Carolina group, maybe we should be looking to the broader community to accommodate walkers and bikers on our roads routinely. Our childhood obesity problem did not originate in our schools and it will not be fixed there. This is a community health crisis that will require much more than our schools to resolve.

Children spend approximately six hours each day in school, five days each week. If we continue to expect that all of our children’s needs will be met by the school in that time frame, we will be perpetually disappointed with the results.

Rep. Terry Hayes, Buckfield