The Los Angeles Board of Education agreed Wednesday in a 7-0 vote to retain L.A. schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho for another four years with the details of his contract still under negotiation.
In a brief announcement, Carvalho, 60, said he would not be seeking a raise for his role in leading the nation’s second-largest school system. His salary is $440,000 per year. The perks of the contract include an annual $50,000 retirement annuity over and above his salary.
“I want to be very clear with this board and this community that there’s nothing to negotiate,” Carvalho said in brief remarks after the announcement. “I’m not seeking, nor will I accept, a salary increase as part of my compensation or additional benefits. My contract is what my contract is, and the most important contract I have is with a beautiful community of Los Angeles, our staff, our students and our families.”
Carvalho has become especially visible in recent months as the leader of a school system that possibly has more recent immigrant families than any other in the nation. Los Angeles has become a center of immigration enforcement activity and also a locus of resistance to it — from Mayor Karen Bass to activists in the streets.
Carvalho — who was a teenage immigrant from Portugal — has said he would put his job at stake if necessary to protect and defend immigrant families, saying that standing by immigrant students and their families is “on the right side of history.”
On that issue, he is fully aligned with the elected Board of Education.
Other issues ahead include ongoing efforts to improve academic achievement, in which there has been recent progress on the basis of state standardized test scores.
Long-term financial challenges also loom, although the district currently has a reserve of about $5 billion — which has spurredlabor unions to push for salary increases well above what the school system of about 400,000 students is offering.
“There is hardship in the future, and the best way to lead is to lead from the front with full awareness of the sacrifice that lies ahead and the contribution that each one of us can individually make,” Carvalho said Wednesday after the announcement. “This is my journey, and I want to thank the board for your trust, your confidence, and for your valor and courage in doing right by our community through the service that we collectively provide.”
Carvalho’s prior and first contract began on March 1, 2022.
Under the terms of his original contract, he would have been automatically hired for the same four-year deal 90 days before the old contract expired, barring earlier action by the school board.
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