Remember 2020? Oh, those were fun times. COVID-19 was hitting and a new social experiment hit our kids. Online learning.
It all started during Spring Break 2020. The kids, teachers, and staff went on Spring Break, but didn’t return back to school that year.
Alberto Carvalho was the superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools when COVID-19 hit. And during the summer of 2020, a new $15.3 million platform called “My School Online” (contracted through K12 Inc.) was setup to launch for the start of the 2020-2021 school year. The system crashed immediately, locking hundreds of thousands of students and teachers out of their virtual classrooms.
On the first day of school, the platform failed immediately. Superintendent Alberto Carvalho initially blamed a “catastrophic failure” of a Cisco connectivity switch and “bad code” between the data center and the internet provider. He noted the district had compressed a normal five-to-six-month implementation into just six or seven weeks.
As the login issues persisted into the second and third days, Carvalho announced that the district’s network was actually under siege by an intermittent Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) cyberattack that was overwhelming their servers.
Miami-Dade Schools Police, working alongside the FBI and Secret Service, arrested a 16-year-old high school junior. The student confessed to orchestrating eight separate DDoS attacks using an online application to intentionally overwhelm the district’s networks. While the student was blamed for several localized disruptions, Carvalho also claimed the district was simultaneously being targeted by foreign cyberattacks originating from Russia, China, Ukraine, and Iraq.
OPINION: I’m going to pause here for a second as this has always bothered me. If your system is so insecure, that a kid with no resources can shut down your system, guess what, it’s not the kid’s fault. It’s your system that isn’t strong enough to handle it. It’s embarrassing to me that the 16 year old junior was arrested when he should have been rewarded for pointing out the flaws in this system.
And blaming cyberattack from Russia and China? Seriously. Ever hear of a firewall that blocks foreign countries? I mean the system’s security integrity comes to question when it allows foreign traffic to kids attending Miami-Dade County Public School.
After a chaotic week of disruptions, the Miami-Dade School Board voted to officially cut ties with the K12 online learning platform. It was also revealed that Carvalho had never finalized his original signature on the $15.3 million contract.
The 2020 K12 Investigation
Following the disastrous rollout of the K12 “My School Online” platform in the fall of 2020, the Miami-Dade Office of the Inspector General (OIG) launched an investigation into Carvalho.
The probe centered on a $1.57 million donation that Carvalho solicited from K12 Inc. just before the school board was scheduled to vote on whether to keep the troubled platform. The funds were directed to The Foundation for New Education Initiatives, a nonprofit established and chaired by Carvalho. K12 claimed the money was intended to provide $100 gift cards to teachers as an “incentive” for setting up their virtual classrooms, but the timing of the massive donation raised serious ethical concerns and prompted the OIG review.
Going back to Cali
Alberto Carvalho officially stepped down as the Superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools on February 3, 2022, a couple of months after announcing his departure in December 2021 to take the job in Los Angeles.
Carvalho started his new role as superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District on February 14, 2022. He served that role until he was was officially placed on paid administrative leave by the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education on February 27, 2026. This decision came two days after the FBI searched his home and the district headquarters on February 25.
The 2026 FBI Investigation (Current)
Carvalho is currently the subject of a federal fraud and corruption probe that involves a completely different tech company.
In February 2026, the FBI raided Carvalho’s homes in Los Angeles (where he had become Superintendent in 2022) and South Florida, as well as his Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) office. According to law enforcement sources, this federal investigation is tied to allegations of kickbacks and financial improprieties involving multi-million dollar school contracts with a now-collapsed artificial intelligence firm called AllHere Education.
-
The AI Connection: AllHere Education previously held contracts with the Miami-Dade school system during Carvalho’s tenure. More recently, LAUSD paid the firm $3 million to develop an AI chatbot named “Ed” before the company abruptly collapsed.
-
Recent Resignation: After being placed on paid leave following the FBI raids in February, Carvalho officially resigned as LAUSD Superintendent just yesterday, on June 21, 2026, citing a desire to not be a “distraction” to students.
While the 2020 investigation focused on K12’s timely donation to his nonprofit, his current legal troubles and recent resignation stem from federal allegations surrounding the AllHere AI contracts.
