A group that has been pressing county school leadership on a host of issues, ranging from keeping classrooms open to extending the school year, is now a member of the Arlington County Civic Federation.
But not without some internal grumbling from the federation membership.
At its December meeting, the Civic Federation approved the membership application for Arlington Parents for Education by a 74-percent-to-26-percent vote. Organizations applying for membership must win a two-thirds majority to be accepted.
The Civic Federation, which at one time was composed largely of local homeowners associations and a few countywide organizations, in recent years has seen more targeted, in some cases single-issue, advocacy groups apply for membership.
In 2015, for instance, the Virginia affiliate of NORML (the National Association for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) applied for and gained membership, then worked hard to get the Civic Federation to approve a resolution calling for looser drug laws in the commonwealth.
Earlier this year, the left-leaning political-advocacy group Our Revolution Arlington initially found itself rejected for membership, receiving slightly less than the 67-percent majority. But in a controversial move, Civic Federation president Allan Gajadhar decided not to include the eight abstentions in the vote total, pushing the group well past the two-thirds threshold.
(In the Arlington Parents for Education case, the ruling was consistent – abstentions also were not counted against the applicant.)