Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent. Alberto Carvalho arrived in Los Angeles with much fanfare in 2022, hailed as a national education leader who could help city schools emerge from the coronavirus scare and boost student achievement.
On Wednesday, the FBI served search warrants on Carvalho’s home in San Pedro and the Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters.
There was no information on the targets of the investigation. Carvalho has yet to comment.
But the morning’s events shocked the school district.
Here’s what we learned about Carvalho from the pages of the Los Angeles Times.
Miami-Dade County State Leaders
In Florida, he led Miami-Dade County Public Schools from 2008 to 2021. Carvalho was praised in the Miami-Dade School District for steady leadership, improving academic performance and creating special programs that gave parents more educational options.
Carvalho publicly denounced Gov. Ron DeSantis’ ban on masks in schools. DeSantis banned districts from enacting mandates in schools and allowed parents to choose whether to have their children wear masks. Citing guidance from medical leaders, Carvalho ordered students to wear masks in defiance of the governor’s order.
In Los Angeles, he was immediately faced with a school district where many students had long struggled but were further set back academically and emotionally by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read more:
Read more: Alberto Carvalho: Bold school leader after COVID-19 lockdown
Read more: Miami-Dade schools principal Alberto Carvalho selected as Los Angeles principal
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Arriving in Los Angeles at the critical moment
He takes over the nation’s second-largest school district at a critical time as it struggles to recover from the pandemic that has shuttered schools.
A big user of social media, his early posts about L.A. lifestyle experiences — riding a horse past the Hollywood sign, skydiving while signing “I love LA Unified School District” — elicited more eye rolls than high-fives. Today, his social media posts are commercial.
He has also pushed aggressively to improve attendance and address other issues ranging from labor to campus crime after a spike in chronic absenteeism.
Carvalho announced in July that after years of post-pandemic academic help, Los Angeles students had reached a “new high water mark,” with math and English scores rising last year for the second consecutive year across all test grades, surpassing scores before campus closures in 2020. These results are often considered strong evidence that teaching is moving in the right direction.
Read more: The Los Angeles Unified School District is putting its best foot forward for its new superintendent. Alberto Carvalho promises more
Stand up for immigrants
He gained national attention last summer for his opposition to immigration raids affecting students. His efforts have won praise across the city and made him a foe of a crackdown by the Trump administration.
Carvalho, a teenage immigrant from Portugal, said he would sacrifice his job if necessary to protect and defend immigrant families, saying that supporting them would be “standing on the right side of history.”
Last year, the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education unanimously supported his renewal of a four-year contract. Supporters cited his efforts to improve academic performance.
Last week, the Justice Department said it was seeking to join a federal lawsuit accusing the Los Angeles school district of discriminating against white students. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in January by the 1776 Project Foundation, targets decades-old efforts to combat the harms of racial segregation without requiring families to attend integrated schools.
Read more: As immigration concerns grow, Los Angeles Unified School District launches ‘compassion fund’ to support families returning to school
Read more: ‘I don’t feel safe anywhere.’ California moves to aid undocumented students as concerns grow
Read more: Trump administration wants to join lawsuit accusing Los Angeles Unified School District of discriminating against white students
Artificial Intelligence Challenges
Carvalho backed an artificial intelligence chatbot for students, families and teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District that quietly disconnected three months after its release in 2024. It should answer student and parent questions in an accurate, helpful, and private way. Carvalho touts “Ed” as an AI-enhanced student advisor that will be an integral part of each student’s unique Individual Acceleration Program (IAP).
But it faced immediate challenges.
In 2024, federal prosecutors charged Joanna Smith-Griffin, the head of a company that provided artificial intelligence tools, with defrauding investors and charged her with securities fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
Smith-Griffin, 33, is the founder and former CEO of AllHere, the Boston-based company that created Ed.
AllHere’s prosecution and collapse are embarrassing for Carvalho and the school system, but do not appear to represent a significant financial risk. The school system has spent about $300,000 with the company. By comparison, the district’s budget this year is $18.8 billion.
According to the indictment, from approximately November 2020 to approximately June 2024, Smith-Griffin misrepresented AllHere’s revenue, customer base and cash to investors.
In the spring of 2021, she allegedly told potential investors that AllHere generated about $3.7 million in revenue in 2020, had about $2.5 million in cash on hand, and had major school district clients including the New York City Department of Education and Atlanta Public Schools.
In fact, AllHere generated about $11,000 in revenue in 2020, had about $494,000 in cash and had no contracts with many of its purported clients, including school systems in New York and Atlanta, the indictment said.
These false statements allegedly continued until AllHere collapsed; while the company was in trouble, Smith-Griffin received nearly $10 million from investors and sought an additional $35 million from private equity investors, who ultimately decided not to invest.
Carvalho said of the allegations at the time: “If true, the indictment and charges represent a disturbing and disappointing house of cards that defrauded and harmed many people across the country. We will continue to assert and protect our rights.”
Read more: Carvalho unplugs school’s AI chatbot, wants task force to tell him what’s wrong
Read more: Founder of company that created LAUSD chatbot charged with fraud
Read more: Los Angeles Unified School District shels its much-hyped AI chatbot to help students as its company collapses
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
