Teacher’s Fast for New Contract Enters 31st Day

Annya Bell, the South-Central Los Angeles first-grade teacher who is on a fast because the school board has failed to meet teacher contract demands, passed the 30-day mark in her protest Friday.

Bell, 42, who said she has been consuming only vitamins, apple juice and vegetable broth, has lost 16 pounds. But the teacher at 42nd Street School said she feels “terrific . . . exhilarated.”

“I am not weak. . . . I’ve lost my craving for food,” Bell said in a telephone interview from her school. “I don’t even think about it.”

A follower of Mahatma Gandhi and an advocate of passive resistance, the 5-foot-2 teacher said she continues to lose about half a pound per day.

United Teachers-Los Angeles, which represents 22,000 Los Angeles Unified School District teachers, has not endorsed Bell’s action. And Bell said school administrators are harassing her by stepping up their monitoring of her classroom performance. Still, she said, she will continue to fast until her doctors order her to stop, or until a settlement is reached in contract talks.

The teachers union is seeking a one-year, 12% pay increase and elimination of some non-teaching supervision duties. The district has offered a 17% raise over three years, with the possibility of a larger increase if more state funds become available. There are a variety of lesser issues on the table and negotiations are expected to take weeks, possibly months, to conclude.

Bell said she is “very realistic” about the limited effect her actions may have on the negotiations. Nonetheless, she said, she hopes to help speed a settlement. “This is something I choose to do as a personal endeavor.”

Gabriel Cortina, a spokesman for the district superintendent, noted that neither the district nor the United Teachers-Los Angeles has encouraged Bell. He denied that she has been harassed. But because of “the attention she has called upon herself,” Cortina said, and “because she said she is fasting, we are going to be extra alert to any outward behavior that might impact on the students or the educational program.”