Why Should Delaware Care?
Earlier this year, lawmakers passed a bill that required school board members to live within their district’s footprint for at least 75% of a given year. Gov. Matt Meyer then signed it into law. On Wednesday, the Christina Board of Education cited the new rules when declaring a vacancy in one of its seat.
Naveed Baqir, the Christina school board member who has represented a Newark-area district from a residence in Pakistan, is no longer in the elected position.
With a 4-2-1 vote on Wednesday, Christina Board of Education members declared Baqir’s seat vacant on the claim that he has not lived in his district – or Delaware – for over a year.
Voting in favor was Board President Monica Moriak, as well as board members Doug Manley, Y.F. Lou, and Amy Trauth. Previously, Lou was perceived as the swing vote on the measure.
Board members Donald Patton and Shannon Troncoso voted against declaring a vacancy for the seat. Baqir abstained from the vote.
While he did not participate in the final vote, Baqir spoke prior to it about his experience on the board during a tumultuous past year when questions about his residence fueled separate controversies.
In the comments, Baqir said while he had been physically absent, his commitment to Christina’s schools had never wavered. He also claimed that the vote to remove him from the board was politically motivated.
“I have continued to serve, continue to lead, continue to advocate for all of my constituents, there is not one constituent you can find from my district who would say that they have reached out to me for any issue and that I have not served them,” Baqir said during the meeting.
His comments added to others made over the past year when he had stated that he lives in Pakistan to attend medical school and to care for his family.
“Just because somebody has to go out for study to take care of families, that does not make them a non-resident,” Baqir said during a board meeting last fall.
Now that the board has voted to remove Baqir, Christina Superintendent Deirdra Joyner’s office will notify the Department of Elections of a vacancy in the elected seat, Moriak said. After the vacancy is officially announced, the board will be able to accept applications from anyone interested in filling in until the next election.
The board will review applications in public and ultimately appoint a new member.
During Wednesday’s meeting, Moriak said she believes a new board member could be seated by the end of the year.
Wednesday’s vote comes a week after an attorney for the school district told board members and Superintendent Deirdra Joyner in an email that he had recently asked Baqir to prove he had “been physically present” in the Christina School District during the three months since July 1.
The attorney, Michael Stafford, made the request in response to a bill lawmakers passed in June, which requires school board members to live within their district’s footprint for at least 75% of a given year.
What’s happened in the last year?
The controversy around Baqir’s residency first erupted last year when reports emerged that he had been living in Pakistan and attending school board meetings remotely.
During one contentious meeting in the summer of 2024, Manley argued that Baqir’s votes on the board should not be counted because of doubts about residency. At the time, Baqir was a part of a four-member bloc on the board that typically voted together.
During the same summer meeting, Baqir had voted in favor of placing then-Superintendent Dan Shelton on an indefinite administrative leave.
Following Manley’s comments, Patton, then the board president, declared Manley out of order, saying, “So what I’m not going to do tonight is entertain this nonsense,” as reported then by Delaware Public Media.
One month after that acrimonious meeting, WHYY reported that a private religious school in Newark that Baqir co-founded was the subject of a grand jury investigation into nearly $11 million in federal dollars it received for COVID-era school meal program.
In March, the controversy drew another critic in Rep. Madinah Wilson-Anton (D-Bear), who introduced two pieces of legislation – House Bill 82 and House Bill 83 – that each targeted the questions surrounding Baqir’s residency.
HB 82 ultimately passed, and Gov. Matt Meyer signed it into law on June 30.
Meyer also signed the parallel bill, HB 83, in September, which imposes stricter rules around when a school board member can attend a meeting remotely.
Like he had done a year earlier, Patton on Wednesday again came to Baqir’s defense, arguing that the school board’s vote was a “political attack.”.
He further argued that he had never heard from “anybody in this district that says [Baqir] hasn’t represented them – that they contacted him and he has not provided for them what they wanted.”
For his part, board member Y.F. Lou told Spotlight Delaware recently that his position on the situation was “not a personal attack on Dr. Baqir,”
While Lou provided the deciding vote on Wednesday, days earlier he had noted what he said were Baqir’s “contributions to the school district and his advocacy for the Muslim community.”
