Editor’s note: This oped is by Armando Vilaseca, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Education, and Ken Gordon, executive director of the Area Agency on Aging for Northeastern Vermont.
As the decennial census process is under way, we are reminded of the remarkable demographic shift taking place in Vermont and across the country: As a people, we are growing older.
While data from the new census won’t be available until next year, we already know that the number of school age children in Vermont has fallen during the past ten years and is expected to decline by some 10 percent over the next decade. Conversely, the percentage of Vermonters over the age of 65 living in the community will essentially double in the next twenty years
These two population dynamics make for a challenging set of public policy questions to be faced in the coming years.
How can we ensure that our children continue to receive the education they need to prepare for life in the 21st century? How can we ensure that older adults receive the help they need to remain independent and continue in their roles as contributing members of our communities? How can our smaller towns and villages maintain their schools, which often represent the heart of a small community? How can we manage the costs associated with meeting the needs of an older population?
Perhaps, the answers to these questions lie in how we think about our schools. Most schools contain an infrastructure that includes a nutrition program, a transportation service, nurses and health educators, recreational facilities, libraries, broadband connections, computing equipment and more. With declining school enrollment, might it be possible to think about schools more broadly as community centers that not only provide our children with a quality education, but that also assist older adults and their family caregivers with the challenges of aging?
In most instances, schools represent the largest public investments made by our towns, yet our return on these investments has been less than fully realized, because we have not utilized our schools to the full extent possible. The economic reality we now confront requires that we think creatively about the resources that we do have and that we use these resources to our best advantage for the good of the entire community.
Not only can we get stretch our resources further, but there is evidence to suggest that we can improve outcomes for both students and seniors by making our schools a place where structured interaction occurs regularly between children and older adults. In a large national study, researchers from Washington University have concluded that students who were paired with older adult tutors showed significant improvement in critical reading skills. In addition, a study by researchers at John s Hopkins University has demonstrated that working with young students improves the health and well-being of the older adults who are tutoring them.
We welcome the opportunity to work with those interested in exploring this concept further, and encourage people of all ages to think creatively about how we can help one another by using the resources we have at hand in a more effective manner.
Armando Vilaseca is the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Education. Ken Gordon is the Executive Director of the Area Agency on Aging for Northeastern Vermont.
