The March 8 election for the Pasadena Unified School District board just got something else thrown into the mix as an Altadena woman filed papers Friday to run as a write-in candidate.
Cushon Bell of Altadena needs to garner 100 signatures this week to be recognized as a write-in candidate for the school board. Bell is running for the Seat 2, held by incumbent Renatta Cooper, who until now has been running unopposed.
Pictured: Cushon Bell, from her Facebook page
Bell, who has been considering a run for some time (and told Altadenablog last week that she was definitely considering running in 2013), said that things had just fallen into place Friday when she filed to run.
What stopped her from declaring earlier, she said, was "the financial aspect of it -- tens of thousands of dollars -- and the number of candidate forums." Missing that aspect of it, she said, is "honestly appealing to me." As well, she said, "it was an issue of being a mom and the work/life balance."
However, after a talk with her son Devan, 9, a third grader at Sierra Madre Elementary School, she decided to go ahead and run, even if it was a long shot. Devan was expressing frustration with learning all the information in his African American History Bee packet, and Bell gave him a motherly pep talk that he could do anything he wanted to. He turned the tables on her about her goal of running for the school board.
"It will be a learning experience," Bell said. "Maybe I'll [be in] a Pasadena African American history packet!"
Bell is married to Adam Bell, a senior program analyst. She has three children: Devan, Dylan, 6, who also attends Sierra Madre Elementary, and Dustin, 4. She has been a teacher with the Los Angeles Unified School District for 18 years, on leave for the past four.
Bell is the room parent for Dylan's classroom, the site ambassador at Sierra Madre for the African American Parents Council, and was very active in the recent Measure CC school funding campaign last year. She's been honored by the Pasadena Education Network for her work as a school advocate, and was recently named by Parenting Magazine as the California delegate to their second annual Mom Congress.
Altadenablog will have a full profile of Bell later this week.
