The Los Angeles Unified School District was in turmoil on Friday as school board members considered the fate of its superintendent, Alberto Carvalho, two days after the F.B.I. raided his home and his office at district headquarters.
The board of education met Thursday for four hours in an emergency closed session but did not reach a resolution and agreed to reconvene on Friday at 12:30 p.m. local time.
Mr. Carvalho, who has led the district, the nation’s second largest, since 2022, has not responded to requests for comment. Federal agents seized his work phone and other devices during the raid, according to a district official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss legal matters.
It was unclear whether Mr. Carvalho would take a leave of absence pending the outcome of the investigation, but current and former district officials said that prospect was likely to be discussed. The district said in a statement that it was aware of the federal raids in Los Angeles on Wednesday and that it was cooperating with the authorities.
The F.B.I. on Wednesday also searched the Florida home of Debra Kerr, a longtime friend and business associate of Mr. Carvalho’s who specializes in marketing education technology and linking vendors to school districts. The two knew each other in South Florida, where he had served as superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools for more than 13 years before coming to Los Angeles.
The target of the investigation remains unclear, because federal affidavits in the case remain sealed. But the inquiry appears to be focused, at least in part, on a tech start-up, AllHere, according to two officials familiar with the probe who spoke on condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation.
Ms. Kerr had consulted for AllHere. The company was awarded a multimillion-dollar contract in Los Angeles more than two years ago to develop an A.I. chatbot.
AllHere collapsed months later, and its chief executive was charged with fraud. The prosecution and the executive’s lawyers have agreed several times to delay a trial to “allow the parties to discuss a potential disposition,” according to court records. The case has not yet been resolved.
One of the officials added that the investigation also appears to extend to Mr. Carvalho’s dealings with Ms. Kerr more broadly, including during his years as a superintendent in Miami. The raid at the Los Angeles district headquarters this week was limited to Mr. Carvalho’s office and personal records, according to district officials. But, one official added, the district is reviewing other contracts that Ms. Kerr might have facilitated after Mr. Carvalho was hired.
At least one other client of Ms. Kerr’s, a training platform for social-emotional learning called RethinkEd, has been hired by Los Angeles Unified during Mr. Carvalho’s tenure there.
AllHere has been under federal investigation since 2024. Ms. Kerr helped land the $6 million contract with Los Angeles Unified, the company’s largest client.
Mr. Carvalho was nationally known in education as a charismatic, tech-friendly leader when he was tapped to lead Los Angeles schools.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr. Carvalho had portrayed himself as an expert on remote and hybrid learning using technology. In frequent interviews with the news media, he spoke of pushing Miami teachers to conduct more live lessons over video, and of the importance of parents’ being involved with their children’s learning from home.
He has often been a foil to the Trump administration, advocating the rights of immigrant students and speaking about his time as an undocumented immigrant from Portugal, living in poverty, before he said he became a citizen.
In 2024, Mr. Carvalho introduced the chatbot, Ed, in glowing terms, from the stage at a glimmering tech conference. Ed, which was developed by AllHere and looked like a smiling cartoon sun, was supposed to “democratize education” and become an “ever-present companion” to students seeking academic and mental health support, Mr. Carvalho said.
Several months later, the technology failed, and AllHere went bankrupt. When it became clear that AllHere was under legal scrutiny, Los Angeles Unified hired an outside law firm to conduct an internal review of Mr. Carvalho’s dealings with the company and found no criminal wrongdoing on his part, according to the district official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss legal matters.
The federal case raises questions not just about financial decisions within the school system, but also about the wisdom of schools’ rush to embrace A.I.
The idea for the Ed chatbot was “unsophisticated from the outset,” said Benjamin Riley, an education policy expert who has become a leading skeptic of A.I. use in schools. He pointed out that major A.I. companies provide many tools for free to educators.
“Why do you need your own custom-built chatbot when billions are already flowing into the A.I. companies we all now know by name?” Mr. Riley asked.
Mr. Carvalho’s A.I. enthusiasm was part of a decades-long pattern of school leaders seeking to advance themselves on the national stage through tech innovation, Mr. Riley said.
Still, as laptops, phones and educational apps have become ubiquitous in schools, student achievement has declined. There is little rigorous research suggesting that artificial intelligence is an effective academic or social-emotional support tool for children and teenagers.
While Mr. Carvalho rose to become one of the nation’s most prominent K-12 education leaders, his career has also had moments of scandal.
In 2008, leaked emails suggested that he had an inappropriate relationship with a reporter covering the Miami schools. Mr. Carvalho said he had not had an affair with the reporter but that the emails he wrote were inappropriate, according to The Miami Herald.
In 2018, he accepted what some consider to be the most prestigious position in public education, leading the New York City school system. He then abruptly backed out of the job on live television.
In Los Angeles, officials have said the idea for the chatbot came, in large part, from Mr. Carvalho. He was looking for a single piece of software that could centralize families’ online interactions with the school district and guide students through math practice problems, among other uses.
But AllHere was an unusual choice to lead the project. The start-up was best known for its work sending automated text messages to parents, and it had never embarked on a project of the scale, scope and timeline that Los Angeles Unified was asking for, in an emerging field in which the best talent was being offered gobs of money by Silicon Valley firms.
Still, Mr. Carvalho had long known Ms. Kerr, who was working with AllHere as a consultant. Her son, Richard Kerr, worked at the firm.
Documents from AllHere’s bankruptcy case show Ms. Kerr seeking over $1 million in unpaid fees from the company.
On social media, Ms. Kerr celebrated Mr. Carvalho for years, and in 2022, posted a photo of them together in Los Angeles after he had moved to California.
Daisy Gonzalez-Diego, who led public relations for the Miami schools during Mr. Carvalho’s tenure there, was also consulting for AllHere. In 2022, shortly after Mr. Carvalho left Miami for Los Angeles, the Miami public schools selected AllHere as a text messaging vendor.
The Miami-Dade County Public Schools declined to comment Wednesday on the investigation into Mr. Carvalho, and declined to answer questions about the district’s relationship with AllHere. But in 2024, the district barred AllHere from competing for contracts for three years after the company failed to deliver the services it promised.
In Los Angeles, district officials and Mr. Carvalho met with the company, Ms. Kerr or Ms. Gonzalez-Diego on multiple occasions before February 2023, when the request for proposals on the chatbot project was issued, according to three current and former officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss legal matters.
“It’s an axiom that superintendents never get fired over a lack of student achievement,” said Kevin Gordon, a veteran lobbyist on educational issues for California school districts. “They get fired over school business and contract issues that go sideways.”
The young founder and chief executive of AllHere, Joanna Smith-Griffin, often spoke about how, as a former educator, she had observed that families needed better ways to communicate with their children’s schools. She was featured as a rising star in multiple media outlets, and the company attracted about $10 million in venture capital funding.
But according to the federal indictment of Ms. Smith-Griffin, she told investors the company had generated $11.4 million in revenue in 2022, when it had generated only $435,000, according to charging documents. She also falsely claimed that the New York City public schools was a customer and used company funds to pay for her home and wedding.
Ms. Smith-Griffin’s case has not been resolved.
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Dana Goldstein covers education and families for The Times.
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