FBI raids LAUSD Superintendent Carvalho’s home and district headquarters

FBI agents served warrants Wednesday morning at the San Pedro home of Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, as well as his office at the district's downtown headquarters.

There was no immediate information on the nature of the investigation.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office confirmed to City News Service that law enforcement officials were serving “a judicially approved search warrant,'' but declined to provide any additional details. 

The FBI issued a statement confirming the agency “is serving court-authorized warrants at those locations. However, the affidavit in support of the warrants (has) been sealed by the court and we, therefore, have no further comment.”

The LAUSD issued a statement saying, “We have been informed of law enforcement activity at Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters and at the home of the superintendent. The district is cooperating with the investigation and we do not have further information at this time.''

Carvalho has openly talked in the past about his impoverished upbringing in Portugal, and how he came to the United States as an undocumented immigrant in the 1980s after graduating high school. Carvalho has been publicly critical of stepped-up federal immigration enforcement activities near LAUSD campuses.

Superintendent of the year

Carvalho has been superintendent of LAUSD – the nation's second–largest school district –s ince February 2022. He was re-appointed to the post in September 2025. He previously served as superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida for 14 years.

According to his district biography, he was named Florida's 2014 Superintendent of the Year, the 2014 National Superintendent of the Year, the 2016 Magnet Schools of America Superintendent of the Year, the 2016 winner of the Harold W. McGraw Prize in Education, the 2018 National Urban Superintendent of the Year and the 2019 National Association for Bilingual Education Superintendent of the Year.

Controversial investigations

Last year, a group of LAUSD students and former district Superintendent Austin Beutner filed a lawsuit accusing the district and Carvalho of misusing $76.7 million in Proposition 28 funds dedicated for art and music education.

Passed by California voters in 2022 to address longstanding underfunding of arts and music education, Prop. 28 provides dedicated funding to school districts to hire arts and music teachers and aides at all campuses so that each student benefits from increased arts and music instruction.

In accepting Prop. 28 funds, school districts are required to use the money to increase and not replace funding for existing art and music instruction and to allocate at least 80% of the funds to hire arts teachers and aides to provide music and art instruction, according to the lawsuit, which alleges the district “failed both requirements.”

The district has denied any wrongdoing, saying in a statement when the lawsuit was filed last year that “we continue to follow implementation guidance as provided by the state of California to ensure that we are fully complying with the requirements of Prop. 28.”

In 2020, while Carvalho was still in Miami, the Miami-Dade school system's inspector general investigated a $1.57 million donation Carvalho solicited from an online education company known as K12.

The donation was made to the Foundation for New Education Initiatives, a nonprofit organization Carvalho founded to improve learning opportunities for students from lower-income families. The investigation ultimately found no wrongdoing, but the inspector general recommended that the money be returned.