Grand jury probe targets Delaware private school connected to Christina school board member

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This story was supported by a statehouse coverage grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

During his 2021 campaign for the Christina School board, Newark resident Naveed Baqir claimed that the Tarbiyah School he helped found in 2009 had served more than 2 million meals during the pandemic.

The private religious school and those connected to it are now the subject of a grand jury investigation for the nearly $11 million in federal funding they received as reimbursement, according to people familiar with the probe and documents viewed by WHYY News.

It’s unclear what the grand jury is investigating specifically, beyond looking at how the federal funds were used. At least one member of the Delaware Department of Education was subpoenaed in October 2023 regarding the school’s COVID food distribution program.

According to the state of Delaware checkbook, Tarbiyah has received about $12.6 million in federal and state funding since 2017. Of that, nearly $11 million came  from the federal Child Nutrition program, also known as the free school breakfast and lunch program. According to documents obtained by WHYY News, the school got COVID-19 waivers, allowing it to collect millions of dollars from 2020 to 2022. The waivers allowed meals to be served all year round to youth younger than 18 years old under the summer meals program.

Tarbiyah received about $1.4 million in federal funding in 2020, $7.9 million in 2021 and $1.5 million in 2022. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the maximum reimbursement rate per meal for lunch and dinner in 2021 was $4.31. In 2022, it was $4.56 per meal. Tarbiyah was allowed to distribute bulk meals and was compensated at the maximum rate.

The school’s receipt of federal funding through its COVID meal program is not the only inquiry it faces. Baqir also faces questions about the way Tarbiyah obtained federal funding through the school district since 2014.

Documents show that Baqir and his wife, Amna Latif, allegedly had been using shell companies and billed the Christina School District $189,000 for professional development services, even after the district forbade the entities to stop invoicing because of the undisclosed ties between the vendors and Baqir and the conflict of interest.

Baqir reportedly has been in Pakistan since January, leaving some in the Christina community and on the school board to argue he is no longer a district resident and should step down.

Christina School Board President Don Patton declined to comment when WHYY News offered a list of the transactions and memos discussing the district’s concerns about the relationship between the vendors and Baqir.

Tarbiyah received about $130,000 from the Christina School District between 2014 and 2019, under Tristate Health Consulting, an LLC formed in 2012 by someone using the name Muhammad Baqir with the same address Naveed Baqir used in 2019 in his application to be a member of the Christina School Board. Tristate started invoicing the school district in 2014 for professional development services benefitting the Tarbiyah School, which was paid with Title I federal funding through the Christina School District. A 2015 webpage from the school’s website shows Baqir as director of communication.

Former Christina Chief Financial Officer Charles Longfellow said he and former CFO Robert Silbert only became aware of the connection between Baqir and Tristate Health Consulting in 2020, after he joined the district’s Citizens’ Budget Oversight Committee in December 2019. Baqir was elected to the school board in 2021.

Federal law requires school districts to provide equitable services for students in private and charter schools. Vendors providing those services must be independent of those schools and any religious organization.

A May 2020 memo from Silber obtained by WHYY News informed the school board that he had asked the then state auditor Kathy McGuiness to investigate the relationship between Baqir and Tristate Health Consulting.

McGuiness declined to say if she took any action and directed questions to current Auditor Lydia York. York’s office said McGuiness forwarded the memo to the fraud hotline staff on May 15, 2020 and ordered the staff to close the log about a month later. No other action was taken.

Current Christina School Board member Monica Moriak, who has served as Citizens Budget Oversight Committee member since late 2010, said Baqir did not disclose any conflicts of interest when he joined the committee.

“If this was above board, he would have the information to support that everything he did followed the rules,” she said. “To me, it feels like money laundering.”

In August 2020, Longfellow sent Latif, the Tarbiyah school director, a letter telling her to stop charging the school district for services.

“We have every reason to believe that Tristate Health Consulting Inc … is operated by Naveed Baqir, with whom you share an address and to whom you are or were married,” the letter obtained by WHYY News states. “As required by law, we invite you to consult with us on the lack of independence between Tarbiyah and the Tristate entities, and in the interim will immediately fund services to be rendered by companies independent of you and your family.”

The letter said Silber had reported the situation to the auditor and the district was waiting on the auditor to take action. Longfellow, now a consultant, said he never heard back from the auditor’s office.

The school district began to be billed for professional development services for the Tarbiyah School later that year by a vendor named AVM Solutions LLC. That company is registered by Antonio Adams, who is shown on the Tarbiyah School’s 2015 webpage to be the director of finance. The owners of the Wilmington address listed for the shell company are Antonio and Monica Adams. Monica is listed on the Tarbiyah School 2015 webpage as school board president.

AVM Solutions billed the Christina School District from December 2020 to June 2022 for a total of $59,000 for professional development services.

“It wouldn’t have been obvious to us that AVM was another company of Naveed’s if that’s the case,” Longfellow said. “At the time, it must have seemed like a legitimate expense.”

Christina School Board members Monica Moriak and Doug Manley said they’re concerned about the grand jury investigation and shell companies connected to Baqir billing the school district.

Manley said he believes Baqir has lived out of the state since January which would already preclude him from board membership, but if he is a member, he argued he could be removed for certain illegal activity.

“If I recall correctly, there are basically two categories of crime that can get you removed from a school board,” Manley said. “One of them is any kind of abuse or things related to children, but the other is financial. And, you know, given the school board’s position with regard to lots and lots of public money, financial stuff is super serious.”

The next Christina School Board meeting is on August 13th. The General Assembly mandated that the Delaware Department of Justice monitor the board over the next year because of the board’s violation of the Freedom of Information Act in public meetings.