It Takes a Village: How a District is Collectively Supporting it’s Students w/ Dr. Harmony Booker-Balintfy

Episode Summary: In this episode, Dr. Booker-Balintfy shares her professional and personal experiences in supporting multilingual learners since 2002. She discusses the diverse student population her district serves, including over 421 multilingual learners, and their restructuring efforts to better accommodate these students. Harmony elaborates on the importance of accountability, explaining New York State's levels of English proficiency and the significance of the Seal of Biliteracy. She highlights various initiatives, and community-wide dialogues on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Harmony also touches on the challenges and successes of implementing equitable practices and the strategic plan guiding these efforts. The podcast concludes with Harmony sharing her personal journey and a thought-provoking question for educators on their approach to teaching multilingual learners.

RBERNing Questions for this Episode: 

1- Explain what “accountability” means in terms of fostering the success of ELLs and MLs in your district. 

2- How do you think the 2023-2025 Strategic Plan for the Liverpool Central School District has progressed, particularly in the  goal area of “A Commitment to a Culture of Respect: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accountability?” 

3- What is your perspective on how your district measures up to others in Onondaga county in terms of its initiatives or strategies to empower its ELLs & MLs? 

Full BIO: Harmony Booker-Balintfy has been blessed to say that she has been an educator since 2002, working in both the Syracuse City School District and Liverpool CSD. Supporting children and families is a professional and personal passion of hers. Dr. Booker-Balintfy firmly believes it takes a village to raise our children to be the best they can.  Whether her own children and their teachers, who support and raise them 6 to 7 hours a day OR the children and families the school district personnel serves, we are all a part of the great work of being the change we wish to see in the world and supporting students. Outside of her professional work, her family has fostered 12 children over the last 8 years.  They are the proud parents of 6 children total (biological, adopted, and currently fostering).

Resources:

Websites/Social Media:

https://www.liverpool.k12.ny.us/

X (Twitter):

@drbalintfy

Contact Information:

hbbalintfy@liverpool.k12.ny.us

To find out more about Mid-State RBERN at OCM BOCES' services, listen to season 1 of the show with host Collette Farone-Goodwin, or to receive CTLE credit for listening to episodes, click here: https://midstaterbern.org/

Transcript

Harmony: 0:00

And she actually talked about having her hijab pulled off of her head one time when she was in class a couple years ago. And she said, for me, she's like, hijab for me is part of my clothing. She's like, so I want you to imagine if you were in class and somebody just ripped off your clothing. For me, that's a part of my modesty. How would you feel if that had happened to you?

Yasmeen: 0:32

Welcome to RBERNing Questions, a professional learning podcast where we answer your most compelling questions about teaching, serving, and supporting multilingual learners. I'm your host, Yasmeen Coaxum, and through our talks, I look forward to bringing the methods, philosophies, and stories behind teaching multilingual learners to light. Let's get into the show. Harmony Booker-Balintfy has been blessed to say that she has been an educator since 2022, working in both Syracuse and Liverpool city school districts. Supporting children and families is a professional and personal passion of hers. Dr. Booker-Balintfy firmly believes it takes a village to raise our children to be the best they can, whether her own children and their teachers would support and raise them six to seven hours a day, or the children and families, the school district personnel serves, we are all a part of the great work of being the change we wish to see in the world and supporting students. Outside of her professional work, her family has fostered 12 children over the last eight years. They are the proud parents of six children total. So hello everyone. And welcome again to another episode of the RBERNing Questions podcast. And today I'm really excited to have Harmony Booker-Balintfy with us. And I usually start off by telling the audience, how we met, how, you were able to come onto the show and you were actually recommended by the RBERNing Questions team in Syracuse. So, I'm really happy to dive into, everything that you are doing for ELLs and MLs. Let's just get started with you telling us a little bit about your current role in education.

Harmony: 2:41

So I am currently, an associate director here in central New York, specifically at Liverpool Central School District. Really just blessed to be asked to, speak on behalf of the diversity that we have here in Liverpool. We have the second largest ELL population in central New York. Syracuse City obviously has the largest as one of the big five school districts in New York State. They have about just over 3 000 ELLs and then, all of the suburban schools around it, all have a portion. We actually have the largest suburban population of ELLs, and then the second largest outside of Syracuse. Currently we are servicing, as of this morning, 421 ELLs. that does count levels one through five, for our, including our commanding students. Of that, in service, in program, just about 230 or so ELLs and then we are very fortunate, we're very blessed, the rest of the students are at commanding level five. This past year, during our ENL graduation, every fall, we hold an ENL graduation honoring those students and those families that have tested commanding, and we call it consult year one and consult year two. For those two years of post service that ELLs get after testing commanding, this year we had over 80 ELLs that were honored, and became consult year one students. And so we really look at the diversity that we have in our district and the ELLs that we have in our district. More than 42 different spoken languages and different cultures, which we really seem to embrace as part of our diversity and inclusivity and equity work. My office specifically, I know you had asked about my title, previously. So I am the Associate Director for Equity Assessment and Accountability. Previously, before I, I, had that specific title, the office that I'm in was basically the accountability person, the data person for the district. The name, was actually under Staff Services. They had it under, the Personnel HR Department. That person took care of the State data, as well as, APPR and those types of, FOIL requests and file, records management. We had a restructuring in our district, two years ago, under what we called Education 2020. Our district used to have nine elementary schools, two, or excuse me, three middle schools, and then one high school. We, under our restructuring, moved to a model that actually has 4 primary K2 buildings, 4 intermediate 3 5 buildings, 4 middle level 6 8 buildings, and those 3 5 and 6 8 buildings are actually on the same campus, so we call it a 3 8 campus, even though it's 2 separate buildings. And then we have our high school. So under this restructuring when it occurred the old, elementary office actually used to be in charge of ENL programming. The director of K 8 also oversaw our ENL and oversaw section 504, because we don't have that in the same department as specialized education in our district. So under the restructuring, the K 8 person specifically focused on K 8, and this office took on ENL programming as well as 504. And in doing that, we, restructured the name so that it was more appropriate, which is how it became the Office of Equity Assessment and Accountability, obviously because we look at State testing and all of those components, whether it's NYSESLAT or Regent scores or 3A testing. It's a long answer to your question, but that's kind of how we got to where we are.

Yasmeen: 6:35

Yes, Harmony, and you're gonna have to forgive me because I am not a K-12 person. I am in higher ed, so a lot of these things that these, you're throwing out a lot of, I guess I want to say wording, let's just say, that I'm gonna have to ask you about now. Just, and particularly two things that I really wanted to know about commanding. When you say commanding, what did you mean by that? And then you had some numbers behind that, commanding five, commanding this, command, so I would like to understand that. And there may be some listeners too who need to understand as well. And then 504, I would like to know a little bit about that as well.

Harmony: 7:17

Okay, so, uh, in New York State, there are five levels of proficiency for English language learners, or ELLs, when they come in. Those level one and level two kiddos are entering and emerging kiddos. They need the most, service minute model minutes for service with that direct support from an ENL teacher. We typically refer to that as a stand alone, or pull out specific support for students.

Yasmeen: 7:44

I've heard that before. Pull out. I've heard that one.

Harmony: 7:47

Okay. Yeah, pull out. So we call it stand alone here. Okay. So those students actually have that direct support with an ENL teacher, and those students really are, very novice to the language. In, under the old programming for New York State, they would have been known as beginners. Some of these kiddos may be SIFE students are students that have not had formalized education for three to five years, in their own native country.

Yasmeen: 8:11

Right.

Harmony: 8:11

So those kiddos, whether they are a SIFE student or they're just a student who is new to learning English, they could be considered an entering or an emerging student, which would be those level one and level two kids. Then when students begin to, transition or have more of, an understanding of the language and the basics of language acquisition, those kiddos would be transitioning, which we would call level three in New York State. And then as they continue to begin or continue to become proficient or command the language, they then move to what we would call expanding or commanding. So expanding would be those level four kids. And then once they hit commanding in New York State, they are considered proficient in the language. Those kiddos are level five. So what's really interesting, um, and I, I say this lovingly when I talk to our RBERN and they're so wonderful to us, Tanya Rosado-Barringer and Yanira, are just, they at a moment's notice, I call them at least once a week. They'll let you know that, because we really try to make sure here we are programming, and providing the best opportunity for all of our students, but particularly those who are multilingual learners.

Yasmeen: 9:21

Yeah.

Harmony: 9:22

And one of the things that I have gone, with RBERN I said, if there's one thing you can advocate for us, I said, I really need New York State to understand that, in our district, we have a lot of commanding level students, right? Level one, level two commanding. Which we call them consult year one, consult year two. So it is an unfunded mandate. We are still required to service these students and give them those 20 minutes of language connection with a teacher, as well as reviewing of data to assure that the language acquisition and proficiency that they have grasped holds, right? That's why there's two years of support after testing proficient. In our case, so we have to support these students appropriately, but it's an unfunded mandate. So we get no title support. We get no funding support. once a student hits commanding. So if you were to look at our New York State report card, you would look and it would show that we only quote unquote, use the word only, lightly. That we only have 230 ELLs or 260 ELLs in any given time, right? We're really, we're servicing 421 ELLs because we have to service those commanding kids too, right? And one of the things I've always said to RBERN and is you could advocate on our behalf, they, we have to do a better job statewide as to how we are adjusting to and accounting for these level five kiddos who have tested commanding and that are still getting support just from a district standpoint, it's a staffing issue, right? If we didn't staff for these additional 100 to 120 kids that we have, give or take, that could be literally four teachers, right? That's almost four teachers when you're talking 120 kids. So obviously there's a budgetary impact to that. And I talk about this with RBERN quite often and quite frequently. Those are the kind of the five levels that we look at here to support our students and that the state does recognize. Those students that do test commanding they test it based on taking the NYSESLAT which is the New York State, English as a Second Language, Assessment Achievement Test, and they take that in May of every year, and it is a four point, four point, four component test. The first is the speaking component, which typically, runs for about three to four weeks from April to May. And then there's about a two week window in May, which the students do the other three modalities of listening, writing, and reading. Then we send all of our stuff out. We do in house scoring here. I know some people do regional scoring. We do in house scoring, and then we send it out for the official scores because we don't know what the cut scores are or the raw scores are. One of the speed bumps that I know our district faces, especially with having so many ELLs and being able to program appropriately, which other districts are in the same boat that we are, those scores don't come back until beginning of August to the middle of August. So in trying to assure that we have, like in our district, so we have the model that I said with the K 2s, the 3A campuses, and then the 9 12 building. So we have four separate quadrants. Three of our quadrants have ENL programming. One of them doesn't. so we have students, we have a Southern Quadrant, a Village Quadrant, a Central Quadrant and a Northern Quadrant that make up the district. Our ELL population this year has expanded so much, which is such a blessing to us because it really shows the diversity that we have, within central New York. But that has led to us right now we were in two quadrants, just the northern quadrant and the southern quadrant, and because we've had such an explosion of enrollment, we're actually opening up our Village Quadrant next year, and are going to have students who live in the Southern Quadrant attend the Southern Quadrant schools, kids that live in the Village Quadrant attend those Village Quadrant schools, and then students who live in the Central or Northern Quadrants are all going to go north. So we're combining those two quadrants together, but because those, NYSESLAT scores don't come out until August, really trying to assure that we have the appropriate staffing. And so we're using basically this year's numbers and this year's scores that we have to estimate possibly where kiddos might fall next year to determine that. But again, once they come in August, if we are fortunate enough to have more kids become commanding and test level five, they need less service model minutes, we might have to readjust our support to figure out where we're going to put, the additional ENL staffing to support the other quadrants that might have larger numbers and larger minutes of service needed, if that makes sense.

Yasmeen: 14:21

Yeah, no, I'm really glad that I asked you about that, because I'm really getting a sense of the responsibilities that you have, that are, under your umbrella, this umbrella title that you have, from that explanation. And, I was particularly interested in this accountability piece because, I've heard of obviously equity, assessment. Those are, buzzwords, powerful words that have been going around for a while now, I want to say really since 2020, in terms of the way schooling or education in K-12 and beyond K-12 is being structured for, ELLs or multilingual students. But this accountability piece, is something I'm a little curious about and I would like you to expand a little bit on. What does this part of your title mean? I think you just, you said something about, um, scores and data, but, yes, if you could just expand a little bit on what this accountability piece is.

Harmony: 15:36

Sure. So in our district, we have a strategic plan, and as part of our strategic plan, we have four main focus areas, and one of them relates to diversity, equity, inclusion, and we added the A for accountability, so we call it D. E. I. A, and under that, we really look at accountability as a multifaceted support of diversity, equity, and inclusion. One, obviously, is the state accountability, right? The ESSA data, the 3A Testing, Regents data, graduation data, NYSESLAT scores, all of those things that relate to the accountability that supports a school district's report card, right? But then we look at it in an additional layer of the accountability to the profession within education and the accountability to yourself as a professional learner. When we had, I don't want to use the word rolled out, when we had made a commitment to DEIA in our district, our first year coming off of, COVID, that year, our superintendent had committed to five professional development days, surrounding DEIA. And with doing that, each of those days, we did a different focus. And the first rollout, we explained, what is DEIA? The diversity is who we are, right? Who we are as a district. The population that we have, in our district, about any given year, between 40 to 44 percent free and reduced lunch students. We have just about 20 to 21 percent of students who are students with disabilities. we are just under the 5 percent of ELLs, for the district. which, the 5 percent gives you that language acquisition waiver. We technically qualify for the, the waiver. We have, we, do, submit for the waiver. The"but" part of this is, is because we have so many ELLs, we still do embedded PD. So we are the only district that I'm aware of outside of Syracuse that actually has an ENL instructional coach. And our district was really committed to that when my office took over this, department. Particularly, 1 of our middle schools was a school in potential need of targeted support at the local level based on the ELLs ESSA data on the 3-8 ELA assessment and, particularly this middle school, less than 1 percent of their ELLs was showing proficiency on the 3-8 assessments. And so, um, I had really explained to the district from a systematic standpoint, and from a global standpoint, we really have to do some targeted, professional development for the teachers there because this building had long standing ELLs for many years, and so we really had to look at doing things differently because it wasn't that, oh, this was a new building and the teachers just didn't know how to work with students who were learning a new language, right? Or, who were expanding upon their use of language. And so I said, we really need an instructional coach that can go in and really give some targeted content specific support. And at the same time, we had looked at the restructuring to move the other three quadrants into our Northern Quadrant, which traditionally had never had ELLs. And so because of that, I said, we also need a coach that can go in and really do the basics of how do you create a welcoming and affirming environment? How do you make sure that kiddos and families that are coming from various places around the world, depending on their native country, depending on civil war that's going on and or global war that's going on, how do you create that environment so they feel that they are part of this community? We were able to get an instructional coach who was able to give those 2 different types of professional development, and then next year, when we expand to our 3rd quadrant, she will be doing basically a year 3 with those teachers in the Southern Quadrant. You've had ELLs for many years. Let's continue to look at content specific support for our Northern Quadrant students. This is your second year having ELLs. Okay, what does your tool look like with building capacity, of building that welcoming and affirming environment? And then in that Village Quadrant, which will have its first year of ELLs doing similar things that she did with the Northern Quadrant the year previous about the basics of developing a welcoming affirming environment. You know, having posters when students walk right into the building in their native language. Having meet and greet family nights or international nights. These are basic things that any district can do to honor all cultures, even for those that may not be ELLs, right? Just building that base knowledge for, the students and the families that are part of that community to feel that they are truly in the community. That's the other piece of how we were asking about accountability of us looking at the data to make decisions on how our professional development drives. And then we ask our staff when you are accountable to yourself as a professional learner and growing as a professional learner, you are also accountable to your building and your team and the team of teachers that you work with to really ensure that those equitable practices, as well as research based practices of creating a welcoming and affirming environment, as well as being instructionally sound, are occurring, and occurring with fidelity. That's how accountability came into our DEIA work. It's like a three pronged facet, if you will.

Yasmeen: 21:22

And I think it's a very important one, because when you are describing the levels, the commanding levels, I was just I'm a very visual person. I was thinking about it in terms of a continuum and when you have such a continuum, right? It's really important to be checking in at the various points of it, right? And then not to allow this dropping off once the continuum is coming to an end, like with these level five commanding students, it's really important, not to let the ball drop. And I feel like definitely this account of these different measures of accountability that you have named. allow for that to happen, for everything to stay cohesive so that the continuum isn't looked at as, okay, this is completely done. You know, how are we then offering support, um, as people are transitioning out of the continuum, in other words. This is just how I've, how I've conceptualized what you were just talking about. Definitely, you mentioned your plan, right? So, in looking at this, 2023, it was 2023 to 2025, this particular strategic plan, for the school district, you already talked about this commitment to a culture of respect, diversity, equity, inclusion and account accountability. And, then you talked about 4 areas. I'm just for the audience going to give them an idea of these. So just reading from the strategic plan, it says this goal is grounded in an education system that creates. One, students who will experience academic success. Two, students who will be socio politically conscious and socio culturally responsive. And then, I have one more here, which is students who will have a critical lens in which they challenge inequitable systems of access, power, and privilege. So, if you can just touch on a little bit of each of these, I feel like in your previous answer, maybe you touched on, this idea about academic success, but if you can just dive into those 3 and was there a 4th one, you mentioned 4 before did I miss something? So there's

Harmony: 23:51

4 goals, under the DEIA goal, those are the components that we're looking to measure over the four year plan because we had education 2020, our last strategic plan ended in 2020. We didn't get to adopt a new plan until 2021. So the current strategic plan we have runs 2021 to 2025, and those goals include like professional learning communities, multi tiered systems of support for students, the DEIA component. And then within that DEIA component, here are the three or four goals that we are looking to measure within that or competencies we're looking to measure within that. One of the things that we are super proud of and truly blessed is that we, for many years now, I want to say five or six, and if I had done my research homework, I would definitely have grabbed that number ahead of time. but at least the last five years, we have been a part of, the consortium, within the, RBERN as well as within our local BOCES, to have students participate in the New York State Seal of Biliteracy. One of the things we look at with academic achievement is, we started going for the seal of biliteracy initially in this district to support our ELLs because we knew that these children were coming in speaking 3, 4, sometimes 5 languages. And they could read, write, speak, listen in their native language, or multiple, native languages, right, heritage languages. And so we initially went to, honoring and being a part of the consortium to do the seal of biliteracy for that component. We've been fortunate enough that our students who are in our Spanish level four or French level four and five classes have been able to also do the seal of biliteracy because they too meet the requirements for that. So some years we have had, again, this has been over the last five or six years, some years we've had just under 60 kids from the graduating class earn the New York State seal of biliteracy. And in that case, you have students that have to meet criteria, not only in English, but also in a world or native language, right? And they have to do certain components to be able to, show their proficiency and show that they are at an intermediate high or intermediate mid, depending on the language, level of proficiency to say that they are truly multilingual, right? And so this past year, we actually, again, high at high end of the years, we've had just about 60 kids or so this past year, we had 38 students that earned the New York State seal of biliteracy. And of those 38, three of them actually earned tri literacy designation, so that they showed proficiency in not only English, but then two additional world languages, and presented in those world languages to show that proficiency. And so that's one of the components we look at with the academic success for students who are ELLs or who are multilingual learners. The other things that we do look at that we are so blessed to be a part of is the work that we have for students. We talked about the goal of having them challenge, inequities within the system, if you will,

Yasmeen: 27:11

Right.

Harmony: 27:12

It's just the community, right? It's just the world in which we live. Because of the work that we were doing in our district surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion, we got contacted by Onondaga County and was asked to be a part if we would be interested in having students be a part of what's called SCORE and SCORE is the Student Coalition On Race and Equity and these students actually with CCIC and Onondaga County actually come together in the summer for somewhere for about 4 to 6 weeks, depending on the summer, and they actually get paid to do like a trained internship and get trained on how to not only speak to adults, but to speak to other students on issues surrounding DEIA, particularly on bias, explicit bias, implicit bias, redlining. those type of things. And then these students actually come back and turnkey the information in some component within our district. We're proud to say that they have actually trained, and these are high school level students, right? Who get up and have, presented in front of an entire high school staff of over 300 and trained them on implicit and explicit bias. They trained our entire middle level teaching team, same thing, just under 300 staff members. They presented at our board of education at an open board meeting on this topic. And so really trying to make not only the community aware, but those that live in the community and are really part of that vested stakeholder group to understand how everyone hold by it holds biases, but how we address and honor those biases can really impact that welcoming and affirming environment that we have. Those students that were a part of SCORE, the first year that they presented, the first year we had it, we had three students that did it. The next year we had eight student, no, next year we had nine students do it. And then this past year we've had eight students do it because we're going into this coming year will be our fourth year doing SCORE or being invited to do SCORE. And so the students actually, get the Triple C award from the attorney general's office. They actually get honored with that every year, the SCORE teams from CCIC in Onondaga County nominate our SCORE students and the Attorney General for New York State has honored them with saying you really are committed to, that courage and those aspects of making a change within your community. And those kiddos that did SCORE the very first year that they presented. It was coming out of COVID. So their presentation that they did for the county wide was all virtual. And by happenstance, and I'm a firm believer that things happen for reason and that we are all put in each other's realm for some way or another and doors open when you least expect it. At the virtual meeting, I'm in a breakout room with somebody from Interfaith Works, a local non for profit in our community that really works to do, anti racism, aspects and really talking about building community and using language and positive dialogue to bring about change, rather than, forcefully just demanding it, if you will. And in this breakout group, one of the, colleagues that was there was like, Oh, you're from Liverpool. we've been trying to get into Liverpool for 20 years to do community wide dialogue, which is an inter school exchange of high school students that come together and really talk about, issues surrounding race and the more similar things that we have in common as a community, regardless if you're an urban school or a suburban school or rural school. And I said, I, when I was in Syracuse City, and I used to work there, I said, I'm very familiar with community wide dialogue. what do you mean we've never done it in, in Liverpool? And she said, yeah, we've been trying to get into your district for 20 years and haven't been able to. And I said, we're going to do it. And that year we signed on to community wide dialogue. And a lot of those SCORE students became the head leaders of Community Wide. Those students, and we've stayed with Community Wide at this point for the last three years. We do an exchange with one of the city school districts, city schools in, Syracuse City every year, and our students just really have embraced the idea of community and talking about those issues such as redlining or other aspects that really can divide communities, rather than helping understand the similarities that we have. Those students, came together and really talked about wanting to make powerful impacts, not only through these dialogue circles that they were having with the greater community, but within their own school community. So those students created a kind of subdivision club known as Know Your Neighbor, and it's the idea of really knowing who your neighbor is to appreciate who they are separately. Those students that are part of Know Your Neighbor are SCORE students, they are community wide dialogue students, and some of them are just friends or allies of both, or they were part of another group we have here in Liverpool known as the Muslim Student Association. So those kind of three or four groups that came together to create Know Your Neighbor this past year actually started to, so they previously had done this screening with, of the adults and doing professional development for adults on biased and bullying, but now that they were doing the Know Your Neighbor and doing more of the in house with student work, they actually went to our middle schools to three of our four middle schools were able to do it this year and did a, they created the entire presentation themselves and it was on bias and bullying and really talking about the different aspects of bullying. One of our ELL students had talked about that, sometimes you're doing things you may not even make consider bullying. She's but you have to understand of how it can come across when it is sustained, when it is, there is an imbalance of power. And she actually talked about having her hijab pulled off of her head one time when she was in class a couple years ago, and she said, for me, she's like, hijab for me is is part of my clothing. She's like, so I want you to imagine if you were in class and somebody just ripped off your clothing. For me, that's a part of my modesty. How would you feel if that had happened to you? And she's like, and the person that did it actually had just joked around and thought it was funny to do it, but for me, she's like, you know, that not only was a disrespect to my culture, she's like, but for me, it was like, I was being exposed to everybody. And really, I think the point of what I'm trying to say is that our students have really taken on the aspects of the DEI work that we're doing, not only with teachers, but they too are a part of that, true notion of, it takes a village to really impact a community and we are all a part of the change that we wish to see, right? And the commitment we have of our teachers here, we have amazing ENL teachers. We have an amazing staff here in Liverpool that really are one, wanting to be a part of the positive change, but two, vulnerable enough to say,"Hey, we have a different population. We have a different community than we have ever had before. And I want to learn. I need to learn more." And I am always willing to push that edge because the work will never be done, right? The work will never end. No matter what we say, the work will never end because it's always about knowing better to do better. and our staff and our students are committed to that work.

Yasmeen: 35:08

So I really think, this brings the notion of accountability full circle, because actually when I saw this word accountability first, I thought it was, it had something to do with like students participating and being accountable for the atmosphere as well. And so what you just said really again, brought that full circle because this is something like SCORE that you were talking about is in a way making students accountable for, for these issues as well, right? In some kind of way, because they are really taking an active interest and then speaking out. So I think that's fantastic. I just would like you to repeat one more time what SCORE stands for for our listeners,

Harmony: 36:00

the Student Coalition on Race and Equity.

Yasmeen: 36:05

Okay. Now, you've named a lot of things that you've done in the district to really be proud of in terms of this equity assessment and accountability and it sounds like you think this strategic plan has really been progressing. and, I'm wondering how you see it by next year? Do you see kind of everything coming together by 2025? What do you think might be 1 of the biggest challenges in making sure that this, strategic plan, works out?

Harmony: 36:48

So wow, that's a loaded question. Okay. and the reason I say it's loaded is because the work is never done, right? There will always be new families. There will always be work to do in education alone, outside of ENL and multilingual learners. If the work was ever done, we wouldn't have educators, right? if the work was always going to be perfect and every student was graduating and everybody was getting 100s on, on, on everything and everybody was, career ready, the work would never be done, right? We always have to continuously look to improve because the work needs to be there for our children. For the supports of our students and the supports of our next generation, right? So we always have to continue to work on that. And if we don't, we're almost settling and saying this is good enough and it will never be good enough, right? Like our students and our children and our families. for our own students and our own children, but for the communities in which we serve, always deserve to continuously improve, right? And in my own opinion, no, I do not believe that 2025 I'm going to stamp it and say, guess what? We've built enough capacity, we are there. I will refreshingly say that our district is committed to always having a welcoming and affirming environment, and if there are speed bumps, or there are things that occur that are outside of what we believe is, expectations and best practices, and the way that things should actually be happening so that all people feel a part of the work, then we look to adjust and we look to always continuously improve, right? And so my hope is that at our next strategic plan, the district continues to look at using, D. E. I. A. as a focus component to ensuring those equitable practices and really helping, us as a community understand that equitable doesn't mean equal, right? Not all students or families come in with the same base knowledge, not all, of, people who, look similarly, have the same shared experiences, right? Or just because someone looks a certain way, this is where that whole idea of bias comes in, right? When people look a certain way, there's, at times, not all the time, but there's at times this expectation. You assume assuming something of someone. That's why the work is so important so that we continue to know better and do better and that we continue to, always improve on our own understanding of things, of life, of people, of cultures. My ENL instructional coach, who is amazing, she is a valued member of our community. She is a valued member of our ENL department. She tells a story when she does training, when she's first starting out and, teaching or providing professional development to buildings who are just getting ELLs. Very first year, she did this two or three times last year during the training. She's like, I've been an ENL teacher for 14 years, 13 years. She's worked in urban ed, worked in suburban ed, like I'm supposed to know my stuff, right? The year after COVID, the high school that we have here in the district had a no cell phone policy. Can't have your cell phone in the classroom. And she's walking around helping students and her, she's in her standalone class, which you said, that pull out class. She's in that class. She's got a few students in there. She's walking around helping them. Someone's phone goes off. She

Yasmeen: 40:25

goes

Harmony: 40:26

over and she's all Hey, can't play your music. trying to be all, like supportive, but not come down hard. And the kids start shaking their head, miss, you can't say that. You can't say that. And she said, what are you talking about? He said, that's the prayer signal. And she was like, whoa, she's like, I forgot we were in Ramadan. I forgot this was reminding my students that it was time to pray. And she's like, and I'm somebody who's supposed to know, better right? And here I am saying to the students, you can't play your music, you can't do that. And the kids were like shocked, those that were, of Muslim descent in their high holy month. And she was like, I am so sorry. She's like, I didn't even think that, right? And so it's always about knowing better and doing better. She's vulnerable enough to tell brand new staff that like, listen, I have the training and I still made the speed bump, right? And so you might have a speed bump, but it's honoring it. It's acknowledging it and it's saying hey, guess what? It's okay there was no maliciousness in it. She goes guess what the next time that prayer signal went off, she said do you think I made an issue of it? She's nope I just looked over and I knew that my student was going to go do their prayer and she's like I knew and she was and in fact the other students recognized it understood it. She's really made us all better of what an understanding of different cultures was.

Yasmeen: 41:47

Very incredible story. When I'm listening to you, it sounds like you are really passionate about this work. And it's, there's something that, I usually ask all my guests, but we just started diving into everything and I didn't get a chance to understand what actually, inspired you to become a part of this field in the first place? How did you get to this point?

Harmony: 42:13

There's two parts to that, personal and professional. Personally, I have a colleague here. I have two colleagues here in particular, my Assistant Superintendent, Casey Dolson. She and I first came into the district together and were high school principals together. And really pushed, push each other, right? About knowing better and doing better. But then another colleague of mine who was an elementary principal, her name is Mrs. Dana Ziegler. She is very passionate, about understanding equity or inequities. And even before I got involved in it, her, the psychologist that was in her building, Dr. Leah Stock, and our former superintendent, Dr. Mark Potter, got a group together, this was before COVID happened, and literally started with base knowledge of understanding white privilege, and then understanding the basis of grading, right? Are we grading kiddos because we need them to be proficient, or are we grading them for completion? Because those two things look very different, right? And she and I would talk, even though I was not a part of their initial book study and our initial get together. She and I would talk and I had just happened to say that"Hey, any of the work that you're doing, I really would like to be a part of it because I do believe that, not everyone has the same pathway. Not every single person has the same, drawn out journey, and we really have to start looking at equitable practices so that students can be assessed on what they know, and not just because they completed something." And so, in this group that she had put together, she had told my superintendent, Hey, Harmony is really interested. And from the small group of us, about 5, she and I really took the lead and ran with it. And then she, on the curricular side, so I do a lot of the, I wouldn't say non curricular work, but I do a lot of the student professional development pieces, and then the community engagement events. She's on the curricular side as the Executive Director of Curriculum. She's actually starting to look at, a curriculum audit to actually see what kind of works we have. Are all of our students seeing themselves in the work that we have? And then the books in the textbooks and in the daily practices of what we do, right? So between the two realms, we're trying to cover all of our bases. We were fortunate enough this year, we were so blessed that our district was on board this. We actually surveyed our entire student body, K-12, and the surveys were grade level appropriate and specific, right? So the K 2 kiddos had five questions that they were asking about. Do you feel that you have friends at school? Do you feel welcomed at school? Our 3-5 kiddos had 10 questions. Our 6-8 kiddos had about 15 questions. And then our high school students had, I think, 25 questions. So we did a climate and culture survey, K-12. We plan to do that. We were going to try to do it every other year, but we are, currently going for a grant that will help us with, supporting some potential positions like social worker positions, really those multi tiered systems with support positions that could really help, some of those foundational things that need to happen. And, if we do get that grant, one of the requirements will be to do an annual climate and culture survey. And so we might be looking at doing it more frequently, which we're excited about, right? And we would obviously know, knowing better, do better, right? So we would begin to compare that data, see what those shifts look like. And then also to see that kiddos that had an experience in K 2, how is that then translating to when they become a grade three, five student, right? So that's the professional realm of what got me into the work. Personally speaking, I am a proud mother of six children. My oldest is 12, my littlest is 7 months. And of my six children, they are the full rainbow of children. And so, my biological children look more like their father. My oldest daughter has blonde hair and blue eyes. My three younger children, one is fully adopted. The other two are pre adoptive. My husband and I have fostered 12 children over the last eight years. And of those 12 children, we've ended up with again one adopted son and then two pre adoptive daughters. And they are I call my son my little chocolate chip because he is the cutest little chocolate chip there is. Um, and then we have two other little girls who are pre adoptive who are also, of darker persuasion. And so I'm so blessed that we have the full rainbow. And so in working with the families that we have fostered, I have truly learned that no one wakes up in the morning and says, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna take care of my child today. I'm going, I'm gonna do the wrong thing today that's gonna make me un an unfit parent. Nobody wakes up and says that. Some families just are not equipped or don't have the same foundational support. And in any given instance, I could have been them and they could have been me in any given instance, right? And I recognize that, and because of that, I always work to, know better, do better and support a community in any way I can. If you had ever told me I would be an adopted mother, never would have thought it. My husband and I went into foster care truly to help kiddos and families for the time that they needed it. Life had a different plan and, we ended up with these other babies that, are either ours forever or ours until forever. Let's see what it turns into. So that personal experience of working with various families and really seeing a lot of inequity where my husband and I are both educated people. My husband has a bachelor's degree. He's a city fireman. I have my doctorate. I'm in education. We struggle navigating the system of just foster care, adoption, all those things. And we know what to do. Imagine for families that don't know how to navigate a system and what that looks like for them. And so for me, that passion is making sure that we are breaking down those barriers so that everybody has that access.

Yasmeen: 48:24

So Harmony, I'm so glad that you mentioned that. I mean, you know, I, I had planned fully, by the end of this podcast to talk about that personal aspect of you that I read, in your bio, so you just did it for me, so fantastic. because I think it's truly, it's really beautiful. And, it's really about, I want to say this, I hate to sound cliche, but practicing what you preach, right? So if you're always talking about family, community, and diversity, also having a family that represents that, that you've created, is really, again, bringing things kind of full circle in terms of your professional and your personal life, and your values. So, um, before we wrap up today, where can people find more information about you, about your work in the district, about initiatives that the district is, pulling off at this point or planning, to pull off? Just tell us, please.

Harmony: 49:23

Please feel free, anyone who would love to. We are always about reaching out and me learning from you, you learning from us, us learning together. We are always, as I said, the work is never done. So anything I can learn from you to become better, to do better for our families and our community and our school district, we are willing to look at and adopt for our needs. And we would share the same for you. You can always visit our website at, Liverpool Central School District. You can always reach out to me. And you are obviously always welcome to reach me at my district email, which is H, B as in boy, B as in boy, A as in apple, L as in lamp, I as in igloo, N as in T as in Tom. F as in Frank, Y as in York, at liverpool. k12. ny. us. Or you can find me on, X, formerly known as Twitter, at Dr. Balintfy. Be more than happy to reach out to you. Our district is really great. We have a meeting communications person here, who puts a lot out through what we call parent square, which is how we communicate with families, but also really working to get a lot out on, X Twitter, also on Facebook. And we're always looking at new and inviting ways to get the message out there regarding all the work that happens. We do work not only with diversity, equity inclusion, but we have an in house CTE program. We also, partner obviously with our BOCES, but we have an in house career and technical education program that started over the last three years, that our high school team has done a fantastic job at doing. and so students don't have to leave to get those endorsements. They can actually stay here, on campus to do it and then we have an amazing fine arts program who gets many accolades every year for the work that they do and an amazing athletic department. One of our elementary schools was actually just honored for being one of, I believe it's 13 or 14, don't quote me on that, 13 or 14, a PLC school, honored by Solution Tree, one of the only 13 or 14 in New York State. So one of our K 2 elementary buildings was honored this year for that. All of these great things and initiatives that are happening, that we continue to improve on, right? We continue to do the work, are always thrown out there on social media or thrown out on our website. So please, we appreciate you, looking at that, giving us feedback and obviously working with us and just being a part of our journey so we can be a part of your journey. One of the former, a former colleague of ours that was here, she's now a superintendent in a smaller, district in central New York. One of the things that she always says is, your success is my success. And like, when we work together as a team, when you're honored and you do well, that's a reflection of the work that we did together. So, really, really hope that kind of resonates forward for everybody in the work that they do with ELLs, they do with diversity, equity, and inclusion, and they do it with bettering for families and for the community.

Yasmeen: 52:27

Okay, wonderful. So I would like to wrap up the podcast with what you feel is a burning question that today's educators should consider in order to improve their service to the ELL community?

Harmony: 52:47

So I'm going to actually turn this a slight way, if I will. We have a student who, when we are introducing new faculty to, what it is to have ELLs in your community, one of our students who was a former ELL actually comes and does the professional development with our teacher. And what he does is he would get up and start the entire presentation in Arabic. And he expects all of the teachers to understand what's going on. And all of the teachers have said through that experience, I didn't realize, like it took a few minutes, and the simple thing that he's asking them to do is to write their name in Arabic. And he's given them the alphabet, he has given them the sheet of paper, but everything is just spoken in Arabic. So I wouldn't necessarily say a burning question. I think it's more of a, if you were to be picked up today and taken halfway around the country. around the world, around the globe, right? And you were to be placed in the exact class that you are teaching, but it was taught in a completely different language, could you, and how would you, find your success? Consider that for our ELLs, because that is many of them.

Yasmeen: 54:10

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, Harmony Booker Balintfy. It's been a pleasure having you on the RBERNing Questions podcast today.

Harmony: 54:20

Thank you so much. Wish you all a safe, wonderful summer.

Yasmeen: 54:30

Thank you for tuning in to RBERNing Questions, produced by MidState RBERN at OCM BOCES. If you would like to learn more about today's guest or any of the resources we discussed, please visit Mid-State RBERN's webpage at ocmboces. org. That's o c m b o c e s dot org. Join us next time where we hope to answer more of your burning questions.