Two Newark School Board Members Implicated in School-Lunch Fraud

Two members of the Newark Schools Advisory Board are among more than 100 people across New Jersey who have been “referred for prosecution” by a state agency investigating fraud in the free and reduced-cost school lunch program.

The state comptroller’s office Wednesday released a report showing that dozens of public employees -- including a small number of school district employees -- submitted false or incomplete income information in applications on behalf of their children or children in their household. 

Antoinette Baskerville-Richardson, president of the Newark Public Schools Advisory Board, said she had not yet seen the report Wednesday afternoon. 

In many instances, the applicants failed to declare their own full income or the income of someone else in their household, such as a spouse. In other cases, applicants reported their take-home pay instead of their gross income.

The 65-year-old free and reduced lunch program, largely subsidized by the US Department of Agriculture and administered by local school districts, is intended for the children of low-income families. The number of free- and reduced-lunch children within a district also helps determine a school district’s level of state aid.

The report did not include  the names of those recommended for further investigation by the state Division of Criminal Justice. A spokesperson for the comptroller’s office declined to identify them Wednesday.

But the report did include details about a few of those investigated, including one of the Newark school board members, a woman who did not mention her child-support payments as part of her income.

There are four women on the Newark Schools Advisory Board, at least two of whom have children attending Newark public schools. However, applicants could legally have been seeking the benefit for a child other than one of their own. 

The state comptroller’s office began to probe the school lunch program statewide following  an investigation by The Star Ledger and other media of fraud in the Elizabeth school system’s program. More than a dozen districts, including Bayonne, Pleasantville, Paterson, Egg Harbor as well as Newark and the Essex County Vo-Tech system, were all investigated.

The report noted that there were some procedural errors affecting the verification of applicants’ income. Guidelines prohibit school districts from reviewing income information on more than three percent of all applicants for the program. Many of those who could be reviewed had reported incomes near the threshold to qualify.

But a memo from the USDA authorizing districts to review income data submitted by public employees was never circulated in New Jersey, the report said. When such cases were reviewed, however, the applicants often had the benefit reduced or eliminated. In Newark, for example, 64 percent of applications reviewed resulted in the applicant being disqualified for the program or having the benefit lowered from free to reduced-cost lunch.

Also in Newark, no school district employees were cited in the report, but 22 employees who work in some public capacity and who have children receiving the benefit were. About a third of the 63 public employees across the state referred for investigation have children attending school in the city.