Just keep swimming

I am a bit of a Pixar junkie, so it is appropo that I find a metaphor for quite a lot in Finding Nemo. Pardon the Chris Farley, but remember that time when the face mask falls into deeper and darker water? Remember when Dori keeps uttering "Just keep swimming" to Nemo's dad (played fabulously by Albert Brooks) as a way to find the face mask? Then they find it and it is a seminal moment in Dori's life because she gets what she wants, which is to remember something in her long-term memory? Yeah?

I liked that part.

I am still confident that we are working toward a settlement, but we do keep working.

We met with the district yesterday and today. We will also meet again next week, including a meeting on Thursday scheduled to go all day again. We need to make sure that we have exhausted our proposals, our ideas, and our energy. When we do have a settlement to report, you can be assured that we have left no points on the bench. When we do have a settlement to report, you can also be assured that we will share who got the most penalty minutes, too, but not until you have read the tentative agreement.

We will get this wrapped up, voting and all, by January 15th. We are committed to that. Having that commitment brings a modicum of relief and focus on all the other matters governing the daily work of the St. Paul Federation of Teachers: our members' questions about programming changes, work to support those on improvement plans, our National Board Certification "Take One!" Federal Grant site, researching the implementation of Peer Assistance and Review, encouraging members to sign up for the Education Minnesota Representative Convention, recruiting members and others to present topics of expertise at the April 12th professional conference, expanding our ER&D courses, implementing our ambitious organizing plan, and staffing committees, boards and councils looking for SPFT input.