Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho was placed on paid leave Friday by the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Board of Education following FBI raids on his home and office earlier in the week. The board named Chief of School Operations Andres Chait acting superintendent, LAUSD announced on its website.
The board, which has launched its own investigation, said it made the move to “ensure the district’s leadership remains focused on the mission of providing world-class teaching and learning in the classroom.”
“Andres Chait is a highly regarded leader and educator, and we are lucky to have him step in seamlessly to oversee our schools,” Board of Education President Scott M. Schmerelson said in a statement. “Over the past several years, our educators and students have made enormous strides, and we expect that progress to continue unimpeded.”
Chait added that he is taking the helm during a “critical time.” “Our focus remains clear: to ensure stability, continuity, and strong leadership for our students, families, and employees,” Chait said.
Widespread media reports linked the raids on Carvalho’s home and office to a $6 million contract the district awarded to a start-up company, AllHere, to create a personalized student assistant in 2024. The chatbot, called Ed, failed during the pilot stage and AllHere later folded amid a fraud investigation.
In an appearance on District Administration’s podcast in 2024, Carvalho touted Ed as a transformative technology that “addresses every single issue students may be facing.”
“It’s your best friend, your concierge, your personal assistant, your buddy,” Carvalho told DA. “Ed is transforming a school district of 540,000 students into 540,000 schools of one for everyone.”
Ed was meant to operate 24/7, speak 100 languages and communicate with families as it learned about students through district data. Ed was supposed to alert parents when their student boarded a school bus and the bus’s location. It was also designed to remind students of sports practices and provide a single sign-on for the district’s array of online learning tools and other platforms.
Carvalho has served as superintendent of the nation’s second-largest school system since February 2022. He is credited with spearheading significant academic progress and developing LAUSD’s Ready for the World Strategic Plan, which comprises the Education Transformation Office, the Cultural Arts Passport and the Family Academy.
Carvalho led Miami-Dade County Public Schools for 13 years before moving to LAUSD.
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