Alberto Carvalho is a rising star in education. Now, he is part of an FBI investigation

Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Alberto Carvalho arrived in Los Angeles with a big bang in 2022, hailed as a national education leader who could help get the city’s schools out of the COVID funk and boost student success.

On Wednesday, the FBI served search warrants at Carvalho’s home in San Pedro and LAUSD headquarters.

No information is available about the purpose of the investigation. Carvalho has not commented so far.

But the morning activities rocked the school district.

Here’s what we know about Carvalho from the pages of the Los Angeles Times.

National leader in Miami-Dade

In Florida, he led Miami-Dade County Public Schools from 2008 to 2021. Carvalho is recognized in Miami-Dade County for providing steady leadership and improved academic performance and creating special programs that provide more school choice for parents.

Carvalho took a public stance condemning Gov. Ron DeSantis’ ban on mask mandates in schools. DeSantis prevented districts from mandating schools and allowed parents to choose whether to send their children to masks. Carvalho, citing the guidance of medical leaders, rejected the governor’s order and issued a mask mandate for students.

In Los Angeles, he soon encountered a school district where many students had long struggled to succeed and were set back, academically and emotionally, by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Arriving in LA at a crucial time

He took over the nation’s second-largest school district at a critical time as it struggles to recover from the pandemic, which has closed schools.

A massive social media user, he made early posts about life in LA — riding a horse past the Hollywood sign and skydiving while signing “Heart LAUSD” — that elicited more eye-rolls than high-fives. These days his social media sites are all about business.

He is also pushing hard to improve attendance, after chronic absenteeism has increased, and to deal with other problems ranging from employment to crime on campuses.

After years of post-pandemic education aid, Los Angeles students hit a “new high watermark,” as math and English scores rose last year across all grades tested for the second year in a row, surpassing results before the 2020 campus closure, Carvalho announced in July. The benefits are often seen as strong evidence that education is going in the right direction.

Representing immigrants

He gained national attention for his actions against immigration raids that affected students last summer. His efforts were praised by the entire city and, he emerged as an enemy of the crackdown of the Trump administration.

Carvalho – a former young immigrant from Portugal – said he would risk his job if necessary to protect and defend immigrant families, saying that standing by them is “on the right side of history.”

Last year, the LAUSD Board of Education unanimously supported giving him another four-year contract. Backers cited his efforts to improve academic achievement.

Last week, the Justice Department said it wanted 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, takes aim at a decades-old effort to combat the harms of segregation without requiring families to attend integrated schools.

Challenges with AI

Carvalho supported an artificial intelligence chatbot for LAUSD students, families and teachers that was quietly discontinued three months after its 2024 release. It had to answer the questions of students and parents in an accurate, useful and confidential way. Carvalho proposed “Ed” as an AI-enhanced student advisor who would be part of the Individualized Acceleration Program, or IAP, for every student.

But it quickly faced challenges.

In 2024, federal prosecutors accused the head of a company that provides an AI tool, Joanna Smith-Griffin, of defrauding investors and charged her with securities fraud, fraud and aggravated data theft.

Smith-Griffin, 33, is the founder and CEO of AllHere, a Boston-based company that built Ed.

The impeachment and collapse of AllHere was embarrassing for Carvalho and the school system but did not appear to represent a major financial exposure. The school system had 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 finances, customer base and money to investors.

In the spring of 2021, he reportedly told potential investors that AllHere generated an estimated $3.7 million in revenue in 2020, had an estimated $2.5 million in revenue and had major school district clients such as the New York City Department of Education and Atlanta Public Schools.

In fact, AllHere made about $11,000 in revenue in 2020, had about $494,000 in revenue and didn’t have contracts with many of the customers it wanted, including school systems in New York and Atlanta, the lawsuit said.

This misrepresentation allegedly continued with the collapse of AllHere; as the company was sinking, Smith-Griffin was able to get about $10 million from investors and sought another $35 million from a private equity investor, who ultimately decided not to invest.

At the time, Carvalho spoke about the allegations: “The accusations and allegations must, if true, be a disturbing and disappointing house of cards that deceived and victimized many across the country. We will continue to assert and defend our rights.”