los angeles — Alberto Carvalho, 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 for his home and district headquarters.
Authorities did not provide details about the nature of the investigation involving the school district, which serves more than 500,000 students, and did not accuse Carvalho of any 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 deliberations behind closed doors.
Carvalho became superintendent in 2022. He previously led Miami Public Schools.
Andres Chait, chief of school operations, will take over while Carvalho is on leave, the district said.
“Our focus remains clear: ensuring stability, continuity and strong leadership for our students, families and staff,” Chait said in a statement.
Carvalho did not respond to a request for comment. On Wednesday, the FBI also searched a third location near Miami. The Florida property is owned by Debra Kerr, who previously worked with AllHere, an educational technology company that had a contract with Los Angeles schools before it collapsed and its leader was charged with fraud, the Miami Herald reported.
In 2024, Carvalho heavily promoted a deal with AllHere for an AI chatbot called “Ed” designed to help students. But about three months after unveiling the technology and paying $3 million to the company, the district dropped its dealings with AllHere, which collapsed into bankruptcy. Months later, founder Joanna Smith-Griffin was charged with securities and wire fraud, along with identity theft.
The school district said in a statement Wednesday that it is “cooperating with the investigation and we have no further information at this time.”
Carvalho denied personal involvement in AllHere’s casting, according to the Los Angeles Times. After Smith-Griffin was indicted, Carvalho said he would appoint a task force to examine what went wrong with the Los Angeles School District project, but there have been no public announcements on the topic since then.
Kerr, an education technology sales representative that connects companies with schools, said she never received a $630,000 commission for her work closing the AllHere deal with the Los Angeles area, according to a news organization, The 74, which covered the company’s 2024 bankruptcy hearings.
74 Newspaper reported that Kerr had long-standing ties to Carvalho from when he oversaw the Florida district and that her son, who worked for AllHere, showed the technology to Los Angeles school leaders after he took the helm there. The Associated Press was unable to reach Kerr for comment.
Over the past five years in Los Angeles, Carvalho has been praised for the improvements the district has made in academic performance. He received similar praise while supervising public schools in Miami-Dade County, Florida’s largest school district, where the National Superintendents Association named him Superintendent of the Year in 2014.
Spain knighted the Portuguese-born official in 2021 for his work expanding Spanish language programs for Miami-Dade County schools.
Months later, Carvalho took office in California and became a vocal critic of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown, especially after the raids in Los Angeles last year.
Carvalho arrived in Los Angeles at a critical moment, as the district found itself flush with funding from state and federal COVID-19 relief funds, but still struggling from the effects of the pandemic, including learning losses and declining enrollment. He previously sparred with Florida 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 is aware of the investigation involving Carvalho but has no comment at this time.
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Watson reported from San Diego.