Miami-Dade Public Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho reacts during his final meeting at the Miami-Dade County School Board administration building in Miami, Florida on Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022. On Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026, the FBI raided his home and office in Los Angeles, where he is the school superintendent.
David Santiago
dsantiago@miamiherald.com
Alberto Carvalho, the former Miami-Dade school superintendent whose Los Angeles home and office were raided Wednesday by the FBI, is no stranger to controversy.
Carvalho, 61, led Miami-Dade County Public Schools for 14 years, leaving in February 2022 to become head of the Los Angeles Unified School District. The raid was related to an AI education company caught in a criminal case after getting a multimillion-dollar contract with the L.A. school district.
A popular and media-savvy superintendent when he led Miami-Dade Schools, Carvalho also made headlines.
READ MORE: Broward home raided by FBI as part of case linked to L.A. schools chief Carvalho
Romantic emails
There was talk of an affair Carvalho had with a Miami Herald reporter early in his career as a school district administrator. Carvalho denied he had an affair with the reporter, but a packet of emails was leaked to the media that contained romantic correspondences between the two written between 2006 and 2007.
At the time, Carvalho was an associate superintendent, and the emails were leaked as the district was considering him for the top job. They indicated not only a romantic relationship, but the appearance that he and the reporter were trying to boost each other’s career.
The emails surfaced after the reporter left the Herald, and she ended up resigning her position at another newspaper as a result of the controversy. Carvalho, meanwhile, got the top job as Miami-Dade superintendent in 2008.
In a 2019 interview, Carvalho told the Herald there was no romantic relationship, but rather the two had “a friendship that was rather free.” He did, however, say his emails were inappropriate.
READ MORE: Ex-supt. Alberto Carvalho has LA home, office raided by FBI; Broward home searched
Instagram account
A fake Instagram surfaced in March 2021 that was set up to appear Carvalho was bragging about cheating on his wife.
The posts on the account contained both shirtless and clothed selfies of Carvalho, as well as images that included three photos of a naked woman, three written posts about cheating and one written post about lying.
In a statement released to the media at the time, Carvalho said he was “both disturbed and saddened to learn about the existence of a fake social media account, portraying illegitimately obtained images of me, that advances commentary of a personal nature meant to presumably damage character and hurt those around me.”
READ MORE: FBI searches South Florida home linked to raid of Carvalho’s home, office in LA
Donation scrutinized
The closest thing to a financial scandal happened in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic as the district was trying to figure out how to educate students remotely.
Carvalho, through a nonprofit he started in 2008 when he was assistant superintendent, solicited a $1.57-million contribution from a company then called K12 Inc. The company was designing a computer system teachers would use to teach students who were attending school online during the pandemic.
Carvalho said the recipients of the contribution were teachers in the form of $100 gift cards — not him nor his nonprofit, the Foundation for New Education Initiatives.
The school district’s Office of Inspector General opened an investigation in September 2020. In June 2021, investigators concluded that there was no violation of state law, the district’s Code of Ethics or School Board policy, but the donation did “give rise to an appearance of impropriety” because the contract with K12 Inc. was not signed at the time he asked for the donation.
Miami Herald
David Goodhue covers the Florida Keys and South Florida for FLKeysNews.com and the Miami Herald. Before joining the Herald, he covered Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C. He is a graduate of the University of Delaware.