Los Angeles school superintendent placed on paid leave during federal probe
LOS ANGELES– Alberto Carvalho, the superintendent of Los Angeles Public Schools in the nation’s second-largest district, was placed on paid leave Friday, two days after the FBI served search warrants at his home and district headquarters.
Authorities have not provided details about the nature of the investigation involving the school district, which serves more than 500,000 students, nor have they accused Carvalho of wrongdoing.
The Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education voted unanimously to place Carvalho on leave pending the outcome of the investigation after two days of closed-door deliberations.
Carvalho became superintendent in 2022. He previously led Miami Public Schools.
Andres Chait, the school’s chief operations officer, will take over while Carvalho is on leave, the district said.
“Our goal remains clear: to provide stability, continuity and strong leadership for our students, families and employees,” Chait said in a statement.
Carvalho did not respond to a request for comment. The FBI also searched a third location near Miami on Wednesday. The Miami Herald reported that the Florida property was owned by Debra Kerr, who previously worked with AllHere, an education technology company that had a contract with Los Angeles schools before it collapsed and its executive was charged with fraud.
In 2024, Carvalho heavily touted a deal with AllHere for an AI chatbot named “Ed” designed to help students. But about three months after revealing the technology and paying the company $3 million, the district abandoned its relationship with AllHere, which filed for bankruptcy. A few months later, founder Joanna Smith-Griffin was charged with securities and wire fraud, as well as identity theft.
The school district said in a statement Wednesday that it is “cooperating with the investigation and we have no additional information at this time.”
Carvalho has denied any personal involvement in AllHere’s selection, according to the Los Angeles Times. After Smith-Griffin was indicted, Carvalho said he would appoint a task force to look into what was wrong with the Los Angeles school district’s plan, but there has been no public announcement about it since.
Kerr, an education technology saleswoman who connects companies to schools, said she never received her $630,000 commission for her work in closing the AllHere deal with the Los Angeles district, according to a news organization, The 74, which covered the company’s 2024 bankruptcy hearings.
The 74 reported that Kerr had long-standing ties to Carvalho when he oversaw the Florida district and that his son who worked for AllHere introduced the technology to Los Angeles school leaders after he took over as CEO. The Associated Press was unable to reach Kerr for comment.
Over the past five years in Los Angeles, Carvalho has been praised for the district’s improved academic performance. He received similar praise while overseeing Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Florida’s largest school district, where the National Superintendents Association named him Superintendent of the Year in 2014.
Spain knighted the Portuguese-born administrator in 2021 for his work in expanding Spanish language programs for Miami-Dade County schools.
A few months later, Carvalho took the job in California and became a harsh critic of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown, particularly after raids in Los Angeles last year.
Carvalho arrived in Los Angeles at a critical time, when the district found itself endowed with funding from state and federal COVID-19 relief money but still grappling with the impacts of the pandemic, including learning losses and declining enrollment. He previously fought with Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis over his order that schools not require masks during the pandemic.
The Miami-Dade school system said in a statement that it was aware of the investigation involving Carvalho but had no comment at this time.
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Watson reported from San Diego.
