The Los Angeles Unified School District just yanked its superintendent off the job. Alberto Carvalho, who took over the nation’s second-largest school system in 2022 with considerable fanfare, is now on paid leave while federal investigators dig into what went wrong.
The FBI didn’t waste time. They served search warrants at his home, the district’s headquarters, and even a property near Miami connected to someone who worked on a major contract. The feds aren’t talking about specifics yet, but the timing tells you everything.
When EdTech Goes Wrong
Here’s where it gets really messy. Back in 2024, Carvalho championed a deal with AllHere, an education technology company hawking an AI chatbot called “Ed” that was supposed to help students. The district paid $3 million for this partnership. Three months later? The whole thing imploded.
AllHere went belly-up into bankruptcy. The company’s founder, Joanna Smith-Griffin, got hit with securities fraud, wire fraud, and identity theft charges. And here’s the kicker: the district still hasn’t publicly explained what actually went wrong or whether there were red flags beforehand.
Carvalho insisted he had nothing to do with picking AllHere, which is an interesting defense to need to make. He said he’d form a task force to investigate the debacle, but that announcement vanished into the void pretty quickly.
The Connection Nobody’s Talking About
Debra Kerr, who was supposed to get a $630,000 commission for brokering the AllHere deal, never got paid. She’s an education tech salesperson who has a long history with Carvalho from his days running Miami-Dade County schools. Her son worked for AllHere and helped pitch the technology to LA school leaders after Carvalho arrived.
It’s a small world in ed-tech, and sometimes that’s a problem.
The FBI also searched near Miami where Kerr lives. She hasn’t commented. Neither has Carvalho, who’s staying silent while his career hangs in limbo. Meanwhile, Andres Chait, the chief of school operations, is running things at the district that serves over 500,000 students.
The Broader Picture
Carvalho’s fall from grace is genuinely stunning if you look at his resume. He won Superintendent of the Year from the national association in 2014. Spain actually knighted him for expanding Spanish-language programs. He came to LA with credentials and immediately started getting credit for improving academic performance.
But here’s what sticks in your throat about business like this in public education: a school district sitting on piles of federal COVID relief money is arguably the most attractive target for anyone with a shiny tech pitch and the right connections. You’ve got desperate administrators trying to close learning gaps, you’ve got budget flexibility, and you’ve got boards that want quick wins.
The AllHere situation suggests nobody pumped the brakes hard enough. A $3 million commitment to an unproven AI chatbot that disappeared after ninety days isn’t a small oops. That’s a significant institutional failure somewhere in the approval process.
Carvalho had previously clashed with Ron DeSantis over pandemic policies in Florida, and he arrived in California as a vocal critic of immigration enforcement. He was positioned as a serious operator. Now he’s the subject of a federal investigation that nobody’s willing to discuss on the record.
The LA school district put out a vague statement saying it’s cooperating with investigators. Miami-Dade said the same thing. Everyone’s lawyered up and waiting for the other shoe to drop.
What happens to 500,000 students and their families when the people running their school system are caught in this kind of mess?
