Richard Simmons loves you!

And he cares for your students.

But here's what he doesn't care for: The No Child Left Behind law—"It's left our children's behinds behind! And that's wrong!" With its insistent focus on just reading and math, Simmons complains that NCLB has forced too many schools to remove recess and full-time physical education.

Working with NEA, Simmons is showing Congress some new steps. The exercise guru wants to see P.E. included in NCLB. He has thrown his well-toned muscles behind a bill, offered by Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI), which would require schools to make progress toward offering 150 minutes of P.E. a week to elementary students and 225 minutes in secondary schools.

Simmons, a former fat kid, hated gym class decades ago. "It was only football for the boys…you'd sit there and, ‘Oh, I'll pick Johnny; I'll pick Bobby,' and I never got picked!" One day, he jokes, he saw a man running through the French Quarter in New Orleans and he called the police. "I had no idea that people actually ran to feel good. I thought they ran from a crime. What did I know?"

Now he knows better and Simmons is devoted to fighting obesity and poor health in children. "I want to inspire as many people who have the authority and power to...get busy and help support this crusade....Something has to happen or our children are just going to get worse."

For more on NCLB, go to www.nea.org/lac.