Linda Rasberry Smith (Louisiana)

This page was current at the end of the individual's last campaign covered by Ballotpedia. Please contact us with any updates.

Linda Rasberry Smith

Democratic Party

Elections and appointments

Last election

November 8, 2022

Education

Graduate

Southern University at Baton Rouge, 1974

Medical

Grambling State University, 1985

Personal

Birthplace

Shreveport, La.

Religion

Baptist

Profession

Retired teacher

Linda Rasberry Smith (Democratic Party) ran for election to the Caddo Parish Public Schools to represent District 7 in Louisiana. She lost in the primary on November 8, 2022.

Biography

Linda Rasberry Smith was born in Shreveport, Louisiana. Smith graduated from Southern University Baton Rouge, LA in 1974 and received her M.D. from Grambling State University in 1985. Her career experience includes working as a classroom teacher and librarian for 38 years.

Elections

2022

See also: Caddo Parish Public Schools, Louisiana, elections (2022)

Louisiana elections use the majority-vote system. All candidates compete in the same primary, and a candidate can win the election outright by receiving more than 50 percent of the vote. If no candidate does, the top two vote recipients from the primary advance to the general election, regardless of their partisan affiliation.

General election

General election for Caddo Parish Public Schools, District 7

Barbara Smith-Iverson defeated incumbent Darrin Dixon in the general election for Caddo Parish Public Schools, District 7 on December 10, 2022.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔	Submit photo	Barbara Smith-Iverson (D)	50.8	1,603
		Darrin Dixon (D)	49.2	1,554

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	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 3,157
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Nonpartisan primary election

Nonpartisan primary for Caddo Parish Public Schools, District 7

Incumbent Darrin Dixon and Barbara Smith-Iverson defeated Linda Rasberry Smith in the primary for Caddo Parish Public Schools, District 7 on November 8, 2022.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Darrin Dixon (D)	35.0	1,491
✔	Submit photo	Barbara Smith-Iverson (D)	33.7	1,436
		Linda Rasberry Smith (D)	31.3	1,336

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	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 4,263
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
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2021

See also: Caddo Parish Public Schools, Louisiana, elections (2021)

Louisiana elections use the majority-vote system. All candidates compete in the same primary, and a candidate can win the election outright by receiving more than 50 percent of the vote. If no candidate does, the top two vote recipients from the primary advance to the general election, regardless of their partisan affiliation.

Nonpartisan primary election

Special nonpartisan primary for Caddo Parish Public Schools, District 7

Incumbent Darrin Dixon won election outright against Linda Rasberry Smith in the special primary for Caddo Parish Public Schools, District 7 on November 13, 2021.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Darrin Dixon (D)	51.7	514
		Linda Rasberry Smith (D)	48.3	481

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	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 995
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Campaign themes

2022

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Linda Rasberry Smith did not complete Ballotpedia's 2022 Candidate Connection survey.

2021

Linda Rasberry Smith completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2021. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Smith's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

Expand all | Collapse all

Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

On November 3, 1952, I was born to the parents of the late Mr. James Rasberry Sr. and Mrs. Ester Hill Rasberry in Shreveport, Louisiana. I am the second child of five children. I am the mother of one child, Brandon Matthew Rasberry (LeCreshia Andrews Rasberry).

I have church affiliation with Morning Star Baptist Church, St. Savior Baptist Church, Life Way United Ministries, and membership with Bride of Christ Apostolic Ministry. I am a 1970 graduate of Bethune High School in Shreveport.

I attended Southern University as an undergraduate student from 1970-1974 and earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Elementary Education, Learning Disabilities, and Library Science. Later I earned a Master of Science Degree in General Education from Grambling State University and Louisiana State University. Further education include studies at Louisiana Tech University at Ruston, Louisiana and Centenary College of Shreveport in Guidance Counseling, School Administration, and Authorization as City Parish Supervisor.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

• If we don't give our students our best efforts, Howe can we ask for their best?
• Because all students deserve a quality Education
• Our children , our future, our responsibility

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

Education: We need to ensure our public schools receive the funding they need in order to adequately address student needs. Our school capabilities cannot be solely measured by standardized achievement and report card scores as these have been proven to reflect socioeconomic more so than actual learning. Our schools are facing many challenges, and we need to ensure wraparound supports to assist with these challenges.

What qualities do you possess that you believe would make you a successful officeholder?

Honesty, Compassion, Integrity

I am a life long citizen of Shreveport, Louisiana and a life long resident of the Mooretown Community. I am an Alumni of Bethune High School in District 7. The betterment of my community has always been my utmost concern. Please share and support my vision to improve and make the future better for the students in Caddo Parish Public Schools.

What legacy would you like to leave?

BE INTENTIONAL. To begin with, I must be intentional about staying in relationship with our grown children and to continue to model faithfulness, integrity, love, and generosity. Find ways to create occasions where you can have an influence in their lives.

What was your very first job? How long did you have it?

I was a secretary at the age of 16 and I held the position for 2 years for the summer program to obtain structure within the school system . The position held taught me how to be patient and understanding with all mankind.

What is the primary job of a school board member in your view?

Set the vision and goals for the district. Adopt policies that give the district administration direction to set priorities and achieve its goals including areas such as student assignment and student discipline.

Who are your constituents?

Steve Riall

Jasmine Green – First Vice President
Dr. Terence Vinson
Don Little
Mary Trammel
Darrin L. Dixon
Christine Tharpe
Barry F. Rachal
Tony Nations
John L. Albritton –

Dottie Bell

How would you support the diverse needs of your district’s students, faculty, staff, and community?

Examine your teaching materials

Get to know your students
Be willing to address inequality
Connect with parents and community
Meet diverse learning needs
Introduce adaptive technologies
Encourage teachers to use different teaching strategies
Hire Diversely
Establish programs at the district level that recruit teachers from non-traditional programs and provide financial help and training.
Improve the data systems that monitor diverse hiring efforts, and reward schools that meet diversity requirements.
Hire earlier in the year to reach more in-demand candidates

Support principal preparation programs, including actively recruiting teachers and supporting their professional development

How will you build relationships with members of the broader community? Which groups, organizations, stakeholders will you specifically target?

WHY IDENTIFY AND ANALYZE STAKEHOLDERS AND THEIR INTERESTS

1. It puts more ideas on the table than would be the case if the development and implementation of the effort were confined to a single organization or to a small group of like-minded people.

2. It includes varied perspectives from all sectors and elements of the community affected, thus giving a clearer picture of the community context and potential pitfalls and assets.

3. It saves you from being blindsided by concerns you didn’t know about. If everyone has a seat at the table, concerns can be aired and resolved before they become stumbling blocks. Even if they can’t be resolved, they won’t come as surprises that derail the effort just when you thought everything was going well.

Do you believe it is important to intentionally recruit with the aim of diversifying the district’s faculty, staff, and administration? If so, what would be your policy to achieve this?

Increasing teacher diversity is a very important strategy for improving learning for students of color and for closing achievement gaps, the study finds.

inadequate teacher preparation when teachers enter through alternative routes and try to teach while they are in training, along with lack of ongoing support for new teachers, which drive high teacher turnover rates.

Teacher licensure exams that disproportionately exclude teacher candidates of color despite little evidence that these exams predict teacher effectiveness.

What issues get in the way of quality education? How would you address these obstacles?

As a country, we must enter a new era. No society can thrive in a technological, knowledge-based economy by starving large segments of its population of learning. Instead, we must provide all of our children with what should be an unquestioned entitlement—a rich and inalienable right to learn.

What constitutes good teaching? How will you measure this? How will you support advanced teaching approaches?

The teacher’s primary role is to coach and facilitate student learning and overall comprehension of material, and to measure student learning through both formal and informal forms of assessment, like group projects, student portfolios, and class participation. In the student-centered classroom, teaching and assessment are connected because student learning is continuously measured during teacher instruction.

In what areas would you like to expand curriculum? For example, do you see a need for advanced technical training or apprenticeships? What sort of innovative programming would you advance if given the opportunity?

The key components of education that we consider are curriculum, instruction, teacher development, and assessment. It is difficult to focus on any particular component without considering how it is influenced by—and how it in turn influences—the other components. For example, what students learn is clearly related to what they are taught, which itself depends on many things: state science standards; the instructional materials available in the commercial market and from organizations (such as state and federal agencies) with science-related missions; the curriculum adopted by the local board of education; teachers’ knowledge and practices for teaching; how teachers elect to use the curriculum; the kinds of resources, time, and space that teachers have for their instructional work; what the community values regarding student learning; and how local, state, and national standards and assessments influence instructional practice.

What strategies or plans would you advance to ensure the schools are properly funded?

Dollars must be at the start of every conversation around equity. Funding is a central component to providing a high-quality education and often leads to improved outcomes. A 2016 study found that, between 1990 and 2011, states that reformed school finance policies in order to allocate more funding to high-poverty school districts narrowed the achievement gap by an average of one-fifth. But allocating equal funding for every student does not guarantee that all students will have a rigorous educational experience.10 School finance reform must focus on the quality of every school, from the excellence of the instruction to the rigor of the classes.

What will you do to build a relationship with parents in the district? What plans do you have to be inclusive of parental involvement?

Parents and community members as supporters and advocates for the education of their children is facilitated through site-based school restructuring. Restructuring schools to create parent and community partnerships with schools focuses on organizational structure. Changing activities; creating new relationships between parents, families, communities, and schools; and implementing innovative strategies are ways that schools can restructure to facilitate parent and community involvement in this role.

Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.

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