No, there isn't a valign tag in the table tag. valign is only a valid attribute for the <td> and <div> tags. I have forums like this. This layout requires the following.
First, in the header, before doing anything else, you need to start a table to occupy the whole screen area.
HTML Code:
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="100%">
<tr><td>
You then close this table in the footer template - make it the absolute last thing you do in that template.
Now open your spacer_open template. You'll see a <div> tag set to align="center" by default. Change that to left. Above you'll see the old explorer layout - this table has an align tag - change that to "left" as well.
And you're done.