The Los Angeles school district thought it had found the ideal leader.
During Alberto M. Carvalho’s 14-year tenure as superintendent in Miami, he boosted student test scores and built a reputation for tech innovation and lifting poor students. He wore impeccable suits and spoke fluent Spanish. His polished public appearances seemed tailor-made for the high-wattage limelight of Los Angeles.
But some red flags — tech meltdowns, romantic scandals — were set aside when Mr. Carvalho was hired to lead the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2021, as the district emerged from the pandemic.
Now, Mr. Carvalho’s past troubles are under intense scrutiny, a week after the F.B.I. raided his Los Angeles home and his office at district headquarters. The federal government has not said exactly who or what is under investigation. So far, Mr. Carvalho, who was placed on paid leave, has not commented.
The inquiry appears to stem from a prior investigation into an education technology start-up that won a contract from Los Angeles Unified under Mr. Carvalho. The company, AllHere, tried to build an A.I. chatbot for students, but quickly collapsed into bankruptcy. Its founder was charged with fraud. The deal between the school district and AllHere had been brokered with Mr. Carvalho by a longtime associate and friend from his years in Miami.
The investigation has upended Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest school district, and raised fresh questions about the tech world’s pursuit of public education dollars and about how well school districts vet their leaders. Some in Los Angeles wonder if it’s also about politics.
Mr. Carvalho’s supporters are pointing to the contentious relationship between the Trump administration and deep-blue California as one reason he may have been targeted. Mr. Carvalho, an outspoken advocate for immigrant children, declared in 2017, for example, that the Trump administration could remove children from classrooms “over my dead body.”
But the investigation into the troubled ed-tech company began under the Biden administration, and others in the city are not so sure Mr. Carvalho is a political target, including some of his fans.
Ana Teresa Dahan, a nonprofit leader who has worked with the superintendent, said Mr. Carvalho’s leadership had been good, overall, for the district. But she and others are also wondering if Mr. Carvalho’s confidence, charisma and left-leaning politics could have blinded the city to problems.
“Everyone’s initial reaction was, Oh my God, this is a Trump retaliation,” Ms. Dahan said. “For 24 hours, we were all waiting for Trump to tweet something. And he didn’t. And now it’s so scary that Trump going after him might be the best-case scenario.”
An Immigrant Story
Mr. Carvalho, 61, often told a classic up-by-his-bootstraps back story. He grew up impoverished in Portugal with parents who had only a third-grade education. Two of his siblings died young, because, he said, they lacked access to good health care.
He said that after graduating high school, he moved to New York City and worked as a dishwasher, overstaying a visitor visa. He moved to Miami where, for a brief period, he was homeless and slept in a U-Haul truck. But with help from E. Clay Shaw Jr., a Republican congressman, he eventually obtained a student visa. Later, he became a citizen, he said.
He graduated from Barry University and became a high school physics teacher, rising to serve as an assistant principal and then in various jobs at district headquarters.
He was known as a suave dresser, earning the nickname “Armani,” and a fast learner. He was also adept at drawing close to political power players and business leaders in South Florida.
In 2008, the Miami-Dade County school board appointed Mr. Carvalho superintendent. He embraced a reform agenda closely in line with the bipartisan priorities of the Obama era.
He took over underperforming schools, forcing out their principals and tightly controlling their curriculums. He also supported school choice and started a new magnet school — iPrep Academy — where a mix of online and traditional courses were intended to “personalize learning,” a popular buzzword at the time. Unusually, he appointed himself the school’s principal while simultaneously working as superintendent. He won a stack of “superintendent of the year” awards.
“It was the golden years,” said Marta Perez, a Miami-Dade school board member from 1998 to 2022.
A Checkered History
Still, there were moments of scandal.
In 2008, leaked emails showed a romantic connection between Mr. Carvalho and a young education reporter for The Miami Herald. Mr. Carvalho, who is married, said the two did not have an affair, but acknowledged his communications had been inappropriate. The woman’s journalism career ended, but Mr. Carvalho continued his ascent, despite rumors about other sexual indiscretions.
The former reporter declined an interview request.
In 2018, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City offered Mr. Carvalho what many consider to be the most prestigious job in public education, leading the nation’s largest school district. He accepted.
Then, during a packed Miami-Dade school board meeting, speaker after speaker lined up at the microphone to plead with Mr. Carvalho to stay. After excusing himself to call Mr. de Blasio, Mr. Carvalho returned and announced, on live television, that he had recanted and would remain in Miami. The crowd erupted in cheers; New Yorkers were stunned.
The Miami public forgave him his foibles, because, Ms. Perez said, “he was delivering such positive results for students.”
There were other issues. During the depths of the pandemic in 2020, the ed-tech company K12 — now called Stride — agreed to provide Miami-Dade with an online learning platform, to be paid for with federal relief money.
Teachers found they could not upload their class rosters or lesson plans without the software crashing. The district pulled out of the deal, but not before Mr. Carvalho solicited an unusual $1.57 million donation from K12 to a foundation associated with the school district. The money was set to be dispersed to teachers in the form of $100 gift cards to compensate them for the software headaches.
A 2021 report from the district’s inspector general found the episode did not break the law, but concluded that by soliciting a donation from a vendor with a pending contract, Mr. Carvalho had created “the appearance of impropriety.”
While the targets of the current F.B.I. investigation are unclear, Miami-Dade County Public Schools, its inspector general’s office, and the district’s affiliated foundation have been served subpoenas, according to two school board members.
Moving West
By 2021, Mr. Carvalho was grappling with pandemic politics and a new Republican onslaught against public education in Florida. Los Angeles needed an academic reboot after students had gone through some of the longest pandemic closures in the country.
When Mr. Carvalho agreed to a four-year contract, Scott Schmerelson, who is now the board president, voted aye “with glee.”
Six months in, Mr. Carvalho was posting photos of himself skydiving over Southern California and riding a white horse at sunset in Topanga Canyon, wearing a tight T-shirt. He developed a corporate-style strategic plan to help the district recover from the pandemic, even as he confronted a barrage of new crises, including a rash of teen fentanyl overdoses and a cyberattack that compromised thousands of student records.
California was an adjustment. Laid-back Los Angeles leaders side-eyed his South Florida swagger. When he lashed out at organized labor, calling an early contract negotiation a “circus,” two powerful and long-feuding public employee unions joined forces in calling him a clown. Then they went on strike.
As he tried to gain a footing, he also turned to some of the associates he had brought with him from Miami.
In 2024, Mr. Carvalho introduced the AllHere chatbot, called Ed, at a high-profile tech conference, promising that it would “democratize” education and become a “friend” to struggling students. But the technology was glitchy and far from the state-of-the-art generative artificial intelligence being developed by leading companies.
At least three former associates from Miami were involved with the ill-fated deal with AllHere. Debra Kerr, an education technology salesperson whom Mr. Carvalho knew in Miami for more than a decade, was a consultant for the company. Bankruptcy records show she claimed more than $1 million in unpaid fees from AllHere.
Her son, Richard Kerr, also worked for the start-up. And Daisy Gonzalez-Diego, who led communications for Mr. Carvalho in Miami, later consulted for the company.
Seven months after the rollout of Ed, AllHere’s founder, Joanna Smith-Griffin, was charged with fraud for misleading investors by overstating the company’s revenues and customer base. Court documents show her lawyers and the government have postponed a trial to seek a “potential disposition,” which could mean she was hoping for a plea deal.
An outside law firm hired by the Los Angeles school board to review the deal did not find criminal wrongdoing, according to a district official who spoke anonymously. But experts in technology and education have cast doubt on the idea that any school system needed to be investing millions in building a custom A.I. product with a small start-up. There is little research suggesting that interacting with A.I. helps students learn.
“This was a fly-by-night company,” said Benjamin Riley, a policy expert who is critical of how A.I. is being deployed in schools.
Ms. Kerr, whose Florida home has also been searched, promoted other companies that provided services to Los Angeles Unified under Mr. Carvalho. They include RethinkEd, which offers online lesson plans and teacher training focused on social-emotional skills, and Hazel Health, which offers telehealth to schools.
Ms. Kerr, RethinkEd and Hazel Health did not respond to requests for comment.
Pedro Noguera, dean of the education school at the University of Southern California, praised Mr. Carvalho as an excellent communicator and a generally stable leader. But he acknowledged that the AllHere deal raised legitimate questions.
“These companies throw a lot of resources” at marketing to schools, he said. “Districts are at a real disadvantage, because they are not always the most informed consumers.”
The board renewed Mr. Carvalho’s contract last September at a salary of $440,000. He and his wife own six homes in Florida and one in California, worth about $6 million in total, according to public records. He has also held significant amounts of personal stock, according to a 2022 financial disclosure he filed with Los Angeles Unified, including over $1 million each in iBio, a pharmaceutical firm, and Alcoa, the aluminum giant.
Many Los Angeles residents have applauded Mr. Carvalho’s resistance to the Trump administration’s deportation campaign. In January, Gov. Gavin Newsom praised Mr. Carvalho for a rebound in math and reading achievement. On the day before his home was raided at dawn by F.B.I. agents wearing bulletproof vests, the district announced rising Advanced Placement enrollment.
Now Mr. Carvalho’s future career is uncertain as many in Los Angeles wonder why he is being investigated.
“Maybe his kind of confidence isn’t everybody’s cup of tea,” Ms. Dahan, the nonprofit leader, said, “but I would drink that tea if it meant more kids can read and write.”
Patricia Mazzei, Stephanie Saul and Terry Spencer contributed reporting. Georgia Gee, Susan C. Beachy, Sheelagh McNeill and Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Dana Goldstein covers education and families for The Times.
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