Alberto Carvalho, head of Miami-Dade schools, is likely pick for L.A. superintendent

Alberto Carvalho, who has led Miami-Dade County Public Schools since 2008 and is among the nation’s most experienced and admired school district leaders, has emerged as the likely choice to become the next superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, sources knowledgeable about the search process have told The Times.

An announcement could be made as early as Thursday, and the Board of Education has scheduled a special meeting for 8 a.m. The hiring of the superintendent is listed on the agenda, but that’s been the case in recent weeks as board members have interviewed and deliberated over candidates in a series of closed sessions.

In coming to L.A. Unified, Carvalho, 57, would move from heading the fourth-largest K-12 public school system in the country to the second, taking on one of the highest-profile and most challenging posts in public education.

School board members reached by The Times declined to comment.

Carvalho is credited in the Miami-Dade district with providing stable leadership and improved academic performance, and creating special programs that offer more schooling choices for parents. In Los Angeles, he would immediately have to confront a school district where many students have long struggled to achieve and were further set back — academically and emotionally — by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In enticing Carvalho to change coasts, the Los Angeles Board of Education would accomplish something that New York City — the nation’s largest school system — could not. In 2018, Carvalho agreed to take the New York job, then backed out one day later on live TV, announcing his decision to stay in Miami.

Carvalho is part of a candidate field that sources have said includes well-regarded insiders with significant leadership experience, notably Interim Supt. Megan Reilly, Chief Academic Officer Alison Yoshimoto-Towery and regional administrator Frances Baez. Joan Sullivan, chief executive of the nonprofit Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, which operates 19 campuses under contract with L.A. Unified, is also considered to be among the group.

Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho is seen during a school board meeting in March 2018 in Miami, Florida.

(Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

But it would be hard to match the resume or experience of Carvalho, viewed in South Florida as a charismatic leader with a trophy case that includes multiple “superintendent of the year” awards from various national and Florida organizations. His district also won the 2012 Broad Prize for Urban Education — signaling a thumbs-up from the late Eli Broad and other critics of traditional school systems.

The Miami-Dade district’s grade on the state’s accountability system has risen to an A.

One of Carvalho’s accomplishments has been keeping his superintendent post since 2008, more than an entire generation of K-12 students. With urban superintendents typically lasting three years or less, Carvalho’s run in Miami defies the odds.

Since Roy Romer’s departure in 2006, L.A. Unified has had eight “permanent” or interim school chiefs. Former Supt. Austin Beutner stepped down in June at the end of his three-year contract, in part citing exhaustion after managing the school system through a teacher strike and a pandemic. Reilly has managed the school system since that time.

Carvalho’s success stories — and low points— have been chronicled repeatedly in Florida newspapers and media.

Born in Portugal, he came to the U.S. at age 17. Carvalho learned English as a young adult and quickly worked his way up from construction and restaurant jobs as he attended Broward Community College. He later won a scholarship to Barry University and enrolled on a premed track. He excelled academically, but took a hard turn in his career path when, in his mid-20s, he interviewed for a teaching position at Miami Jackson Senior High. He was offered a job the same day, a Tampa Bay Times profile reported in 2019.

After four years in the classroom — teaching physics, chemistry and calculus — he became an assistant principal. The superintendent at the time was so impressed that he brought Carvalho to work downtown without having been a principal. Carvalho oversaw federal programs and later became the district’s chief communications officer. He gathered further experience by overseeing grant administration and lobbying state officials.

Under Supt. Rudy Crew, Carvalho launched several initiatives, including a Parent Academy and a School Improvement Zone, focusing on schools with low academic achievement.

After becoming superintendent, Carvalho eventually filled in a gap in his resume, serving as a principal. He put himself at the helm of a new campus called iPrep Academy, a pre-Kindergarten to 12th grade magnet school “designed to promote respect and responsibility among the students and staff,” its website says. All students are required to take honors classes.

His career and personal life also have had low points, including two divorces and a bankruptcy, according to a 2008 profile in the Miami Herald. And just as Carvalho began his tenure leading Miami-Dade, embarrassing emails surfaced between him and a beat reporter. The emails dated from a period before his selection as superintendent.

The new schools chief will take over the L.A. job at a critical moment. The system is flush with billions of dollars in coronavirus relief aid, additional federal funding and surging state tax revenues. But there is mountainous work ahead. The isolation and deficiencies of remote learning have been followed by a challenging readjustment to campus. The district also is beset with declining enrollment and a long-term structural budget deficit.

“The last 21 months have been devastating for so many of the families we serve in L.A. Unified,” said school board President Kelly Gonez in a recent interview. “The pandemic has delivered an unequal burden of illness, death, job loss and trauma that has disproportionately fallen on communities of color. Our superintendent will need to reckon with the profound impacts of the pandemic, the uprisings for racial justice, and the urgent needs of our students and families.”

More than 90% of parents, community members and employees said in a recent district survey that they want the next superintendent to have “experience working in public schools as a teacher and/or administrator.” At nearly the same rate, those who responded also called for someone who has experience “working in and with large, diverse communities” and “managing a very large organization in transition.”

Carvalho qualifies by these parameters, while also being an outsider with a fresh perspective. He would need to quickly master the workings and personnel of a massive, complex system with a governing structure much different than Florida’s. L.A. Unified is the nation’s only school system with a paid, full-time Board of Education, where individual members select and direct their own staff.