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The FBI executed search warrants at the home and offices of Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho Wednesday.
Carvalho has led the nation’s second largest school district since February 2022. He previously served 14 years as superintendent of the Miami-Dade County School District in Florida. Carvalho has been an outspoken defender of undocumented students and at one point was an unauthorized immigrant himself.
“We have been informed of law enforcement activity at Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters and at the home of the Superintendent,” a district spokesperson said in a statement. “The District is cooperating with the investigation and we do not have further information at this time.”
Here’s what we know so far:
- Federal officials are not saying anything about what they’re looking for or whether Carvalho is suspected of wrongdoing. The Los Angeles Times reported that search warrants were carried out at both Carvalho’s home in the San Pedro neighborhood of Los Angeles and at LAUSD headquarters. The FBI also visited a property in Miami associated with Carvalho. The affidavits that back up these search warrants are sealed, the FBI told local media outlets.
- LAUSD launched “Ed,” an AI-powered personal assistant for students, in March 2024. The district abruptly dropped its relationship with AllHere, the company that developed Ed, a few months later when the company collapsed. A report by EdSurge raised questions about what happened to student data in the process. The Los Angeles Times reports that a source with knowledge of the matter said the investigation relates to AllHere.
- Under Carvalho’s leadership, Los Angeles Unified School District has ramped up protections for undocumented students in response to the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics. The district has expanded bus routes and virtual schooling options, conducted its own patrols around school sites, and helped families with legal assistance. Carvalho grew up very poor in Portugal and was homeless and undocumented as a young man. He has said his own experiences mean he can understand the fear that many immigrant students feel today.
- The U.S. Department of Justice recently sought to join a private lawsuit challenging the Los Angeles district’s decades-old desegregation policies. The lawsuit filed in January by the 1776 Project Foundation alleges that a district policy of ensuring slightly smaller class sizes at most of its schools discriminates against students who attend schools with a higher percentage of white students.
- The School Superintendents Association named Carvalho their Superintendent of the Year in 2014 when he was the head of the Miami school district, the nation’s fourth-largest. In 2018, then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio named Carvalho chancellor, only for Carvalho to turn down the job. He took the top job in Los Angeles in 2022.
- The Miami district’s inspector general investigated a nonprofit started by Carvalho for soliciting a donation from a company that created a failed online learning platform. The investigation found no ‘actual’ wrongdoing, the Miami Herald reported in 2021, but the inspector general said the donation created an appearance of impropriety and should be returned.
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with additional information about LAUSD’s AI chatbot for students. This is a developing story and could be updated again.
Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor covering education policy and politics. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.
