Los Angeles schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho has been placed on indefinite administrative leave, officials announced Friday — two days after FBI agents raided his home and office related to an undisclosed criminal investigation.
Andres Chait, a senior LAUSD administrator who has served as chief of school operations, was named acting superintendent.
The FBI has not accused Carvalho of wrongdoing but well-placed sources told The Times that Carvalho is a target of an investigation into AllHere, a defunct company that designed an all-purpose chatbot for the nation’s second-largest school system.
The chatbot was unveiled in March 2024 and quietly withdrawn from limited service within three months — at just about the time that AllHere collapsed financially. In November of that year, company founder and chief executive Joanna Smith-Griffin was charged with defrauding investors.
She has pleaded not guilty.
The length of Carvalho’s leave was not set in a statement released by the board.
Carvalho could not be reached for comment and has made no public statement.
With signs pointing toward an investigation of Carvalho, the school board decided to act quickly.
Barring an out-of-hand emergency, calling a board meeting requires requires 24 hours’ notice, and the board provided that notice on Wednesday — within hours of the FBI raids.
The Thursday board meeting opened with public comment — but there was little of it with much of the school-district community in shock and uncertain how to react. Three parent activists spoke and raised general concerns about the raids and other issues.
Grim-faced board members made no comments.
When asked if he or other board members would have something to say, board President Scott Schmerelson replied with a polite but firm: “No.”
The board then exited the public chambers into closed session for nearly four hours. About 8 p.m., the board recessed for the day and resumed deliberations at 12:30 p.m. Friday.
At the start of the meeting on Friday, board members did not even enter the public chamber before continuing to discuss their immediate plans behind closed doors.
Questions before the board include whether and how long to stand by Carvalho — who has not been charged or accused of wrongdoing.
Raids on two coasts
Along with Carvalho’s San Pedro home and office at LAUSD headquarters in downtown Los Angeles, the FBI provided an address in Florida that was searched Wednesday morning. Public records show that property is linked to Debra Kerr, who worked with AllHere.
Kerr is a longtime associate of Carvalho’s, dating to his tenure as superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools.
Kerr has worked as a senior executive and sales consultant to companies seeking work with school districts. She has claimed in court documents that AllHere owes her $630,000.
Attempts to contact Kerr were not successful. Investigators have not charged or accused Kerr of wrongdoing.
It’s not clear how long the federal probe is going to last.
A high-profile leader
The uncertainty over Carvalho’s future has arisen about five months after the Board of Education unanimously voted to retain him for a second, four-year contract, at an annual salary of $440,000.
The investigation represents a major crisis for the LAUSD, which under Carvalho’s leadership has been trying to regroup after learning disruptions during the pandemic. More recently the district has responded to assist families affected by the aggressive immigration crackdown by the Trump administration. These actions have threatened to destabilize a school system with large numbers of immigrant families.
Since his arrival in Los Angeles, Carvalho has moved aggressively to improve attendance after a pandemic-related explosion in chronic absenteeism. He also confronted issues such as labor and crime on campuses. After several years of post-pandemic academic help, Los Angeles students achieved what he described as a “new high water mark,” with math and English scores that rose last year across all tested grades for the second straight year, surpassing results from before the 2020 campus closures, Carvalho announced in July. The gains are generally considered solid evidence that instruction is moving in the right direction.
He garnered national attention for his activism against the immigration raids that affected students last summer, emerging as a foe of the Trump administration crackdown.
But the district’s experience with the AI firm was a notable setback during his tenure.
Carvalho had green-lighted an artificial intelligence chatbot, named Ed and represented by a smiling sun, for LAUSD students, families and teachers that quietly was disconnected three months after its release in 2024. It was supposed to respond to questions from students and parents in an accurate, helpful and private manner.
Carvalho touted Ed as an AI-enhanced student advisor that was to be a component of a unique Individual Acceleration Plan, or IAP, for every student. But the company behind it collapsed even before the technology was fully deployed.
