July 20, 2007 - ANALYSIS

* MFT will apparently not agree to not realign because they encouraged teachers to drop licenses.  It's an odd calculation, balancing the interests of different groups of teachers all represented by the same union leadership.  Teachers who dropped licenses would presumably be pissed if MFT signed a no-realignment agreement now, because that would render their action pointless.  Proceeding with realignment will piss off the fifty-some teachers who actually get realigned.  However, needlessly dropping an unused license seems to have substantially smaller professional impact than getting reassigned to teach something you may not have taught in some years.

* The realignment flap is clearly straining the divisions in MFT leadership.  In this negotiation session, Rob was really the only MFT voice (one other teacher spoke up twice with fairly tangential comments).  In all other sessions, there has been much more participation by other teachers.