Los Angeles school Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has been the focus of a federal investigation after the FBI searched his home and served search warrants at school district locations, an Associated Press report said. Agents also served warrants at Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters and at a location in Florida connected to Carvalho’s earlier work as superintendent, AP reported.
The FBI did not provide information on the scope or purpose of the federal investigation, the report said. The lack of details left open what records or issues agents were seeking and whether the investigation involves matters connected to Carvalho’s current role in Los Angeles or earlier work in Florida.
Carvalho, who has served as superintendent in both Florida and California, has built a reputation for improving academics and graduation rates during his time leading major U.S. districts, the Associated Press reported. In Los Angeles, the district’s challenges have included pandemic-era learning losses and declining enrollment, while operating amid substantial state and federal COVID-19 relief funding, AP said.
AP reported that Carvalho’s background includes an early life in poverty in Portugal and immigration to the United States more than four decades ago at age 17. The report said he spent time in New York City and then Miami, worked jobs including as a dishwasher and later as a day laborer, and earned a biology degree from Barry University in 1990 before becoming a science teacher in Miami-Dade County.
During Carvalho’s 14-year tenure in Florida, AP said he was recognized for improving graduation rates and academic performance, especially among Black and Hispanic students. The Associated Press reported that in 2014 he was named “Superintendent of the Year” by the national superintendents association, and that in 2021 Spain knighted him for work expanding Spanish-language school programs.
Carvalho was then selected to lead Los Angeles Unified after the Los Angeles Board of Education voted unanimously in 2021, AP reported. That decision came as the district had increased funding from state and federal COVID-19 relief while also dealing with learning losses and enrollment changes, the report said.
AP described Carvalho as a critic of what he has characterized as aggressive immigration enforcement around Los Angeles, citing his own experience as an immigrant living in the U.S. without legal status for a time. Just before students returned to school last August, AP said Carvalho urged immigration authorities not to conduct enforcement activity within a two-block radius of schools, and the report quoted him urging authorities to “appeal to the better senses of those who have the power to eliminate trauma from the streets of our community.”
The Associated Press reported that Carvalho announced measures intended to protect students and families, including changing bus routes to accommodate more students. The report also said the district planned to distribute family preparedness packets that included “know-your-rights information,” emergency contact updates, and tips on designating a backup caregiver if a parent is detained.
AP also said Carvalho has faced scrutiny and criticism over the years. In Florida, the report described questions that arose in 2020 after a nonprofit he founded solicited a $1.57 million donation from an online education company the district planned to use but later dropped. AP said the district’s inspector general concluded the donation did not violate state or district ethics policies, but found it created an “appearance of impropriety” and that the money should be returned, with the funds later going to Miami-Dade teachers as $100 gift cards.
Years earlier, AP reported, Carvalho came under criticism over exchanging explicit emails with a former Miami Herald reporter; the report said Carvalho denied having an affair but acknowledged the exchanges were inappropriate. In 2024 in Los Angeles, AP said Carvalho touted the development of an AI chatbot named “Ed” for district students by the AI company AllHere, after the district paid the company $3 million, and AP reported that the district ended its dealings with AllHere three months later as the company collapsed.
AP added that Carvalho denied personal involvement in the selection of AllHere, citing a Los Angeles Times report, and that after AllHere’s founder was charged with securities and wire fraud and identity theft, he said he would appoint a task force to examine what went wrong. AP said there have been no announcements of a task force being appointed.