Alberto Carvalho speaks at a Miami-Dade County School Board meeting in January 2022, ahead of his departure to lead the school system of Los Angeles. On Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026, FBI agents searched his home and school district office in Los Angeles.
Pedro Portal
pportal@miamiherald.com
On the same day federal agents searched the home and office of Los Angeles schools chief Alberto Carvalho, they also visited the Southwest Ranches home in Broward of a sales person for an AI education company caught up in a criminal case after landing a big contract with the L.A. school system.
Authorities haven’t said why they searched the L.A. residence and school district office of Carvalho, who ran the Miami-Dade school system until February 2022, when he took the L.A. job.
READ MORE: Ex-supt. Alberto Carvalho has LA home, office raided by FBI; Broward home searched
Likewise, there was no word Wednesday on why agents were spotted at the Broward County home of Debra Kerr, a one-time sales representative for AllHere Education. That’s the AI company that scored a $6 million contract in L.A. under Carvalho shortly before it collapsed in what authorities said was a criminal fraud scheme that resulted in federal charges in 2024 against its founder, Joanna Smith-Griffin.
At the time, Kerr said Smith-Griffin stiffed her on a $600,000-plus commission for the L.A. contract. Kerr wasn’t part of the federal case against Smith-Griffin, who is awaiting trial. Those charges also didn’t touch on Carvalho, who had announced his own inquiry into how his school system’s hyped dive into using AI to fight truancy had landed a contract with a failed company.
READ MORE: Carvalho was a popular Miami-Dade superintendent, but he had his controversies
FBI agents at Broward home
Kerr could not be reached for comment on Wednesday. Neighbors confirmed seeing local police and FBI agents at the home in the suburban community of Southwest Ranches. When the Miami Herald visited her home Wednesday evening, a man was working in the garage but refused to comment on what happened that day. Davie Police confirmed to the Herald it was assisting the FBI with a case in Southwest Ranches.
Debra Kerr, a former sales representative of AllHere, the failed AI start-up once touted by L.A. schools superintendent Alberto Carvalho, had her Southwest Ranches home raided by the FBI on Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026. Devoun Cetoute dcetoute@miamiherald.com
Media reports out of Los Angeles chronicling AllHere’s collapse described Kerr as one of many people who were misled or betrayed by the company. An October 2024 report by the 74million.org news site described Kerr as the Florida-based salesperson who, at a bankruptcy hearing, said she “was never paid commission for her work closing the lucrative AllHere deal in L.A.”
Federal prosecutors said Smith-Griffin duped investors into thinking AllHere was a thriving educational start-up harnessing artificial intelligence while in fact the company was generating a fraction of the money touted in presentations and corporate materials.
A big part of the company’s sizzle was its work in Los Angeles, where Carvalho celebrated the coming of AllHere’s “Ed,” the school system’s AI chatbot designed to look like an animated sun and accelerate learning for hundreds of thousands of students.
That effort largely fizzled before AllHere’s failure — a collapse tracked by layoffs and the criminal indictment against Smith-Griffin. She was charged in November 2024 with misleading seed-money investors by inflating her company’s revenue, cash flow and customer base.
“In total, Smith-Griffin fraudulently obtained nearly $10 million from AllHere’s investors,” according to the indictment and a bankruptcy liquidation.
In 2016, Smith-Griffin founded the Boston-based AllHere Education, which was trying to develop technology that would boost classroom attendance and reduce absenteeism in K-12 schools. The company set out to develop AI technology including a chatbot that would interact with students and their families to improve classroom attendance and engagement.
READ MORE: FBI searches South Florida home linked to raid of Carvalho’s home, office in LA
Miami-Dade Schools connection
In the fall of 2022, months after Carvalho left for L.A., the Miami-Dade schools system selected AllHere for a $1.8 million three-year deal to create communication software to help at-risk students. A school system spokesperson said that contract never came to fruition.
When AllHere Education filed for bankruptcy in Delaware in 2024, the company’s biggest asset was an AI contract with the Los Angeles Unified School District valued to be worth $2.88 million at the time, records show.
Among the company’s major unsecured creditors was Kerr, who claimed to be owed $630,000 as a fee for having landed the Los Angeles public schools’ contract for AllHere Education. She’s listed as a contractor to AllHere in bankruptcy filings.
Carvalho, 61, a high-profile critic of the Trump administration’s deportation raids in the Los Angeles area,was unavailable for comment on Wednesday.
Miami-Dade’s school system said no federal agents visited its downtown Miami headquarters on Wednesday, but declined to say more. “Miami-Dade County Public Schools is aware of an investigation involving the Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent. At this time, we have no comment,” the district said in a statement.
While the FBI declined to provide details about why it visited Carvalho’s workplace and home in L.A. or the Kerr home in Southwest Ranches, the agency did confirm the two operations were related.
“We searched a residence in Southwest Ranches today as part of this matter and have since cleared the scene,” Jim Marshall, a spokesman for the FBI-Miami Field Office, told the Herald.
This story was originally published February 25, 2026 at 8:05 PM.
 Cropped (2).jpg)
Miami Herald
Miami Herald Cops and Breaking News Reporter Devoun Cetoute covers a plethora of Florida topics, from breaking news to crime patterns. He was on the breaking news team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2022. He’s a graduate of the University of Florida, born and raised in Miami-Dade. Theme parks, movies and cars are on his mind in and out of the office.