A federal investigation cloaked in mystery that's rooted in Los Angeles and stretches into Broward County involving Alberto Carvalho, the current superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, has a much larger footprint in South Florida than previously known, according to interviews, school district records and court filings reviewed by WLRN.
Records show how AllHere Education, a company that eventually went bankrupt, not only secured a major contract with Miami-Dade County Public Schools, but also employed several South Florida consultants and former education officials, including one of Carvalho’s cabinet members in Miami-Dade, to expand its reach.
No charges have been filed in Florida or California, and Carvalho, the current superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, is on paid leave. But the same-day raid of a Broward County home on Feb. 25, as well as subpoenas sent to Miami school officials and affiliated-groups, continue to raise questions about the scope of the investigation in South Florida.
Before its financial collapse, AllHere contracted with numerous Florida companies, including a Miami-based communications firm called DGD Communications. It’s run by Daisy Gonzalez-Diego, who worked as Carvalho’s spokesperson in the Miami-Dade school district for seven years, court records show.
Her previous title was chief communications officer for the district, and she was part of Carvalho’s cabinet.
The firm’s contract began in March 2024 — the same month that LAUSD rolled out the company’s chatbot, called “Ed,” to 100 schools intended to help struggling students. Multiple national news reports say the $6 million AllHere contract with LAUSD, approved under Carvalho, is the focus of the federal investigation.
Gonzalez-Diego’s role was to “provide strategic guidance to the Company’s management team and LAUSD senior leadership,” the contract stated. The firm said it was never paid for that work, however, and is still owed $30,500, according to bankruptcy filings.
Gonzalez-Diego did not respond to requests for comment.
She was hired by AllHere’s former CEO, Joanna Smith-Griffin, who was charged in November 2024 with allegedly defrauding investors out of $10 million. She’s accused of funneling company money for personal expenses, like her house and her wedding. Smith-Griffin has pleaded not guilty.
Smith-Griffin, who said she was a former Miami-Dade schools student, worked out of Miami along with half of the company’s staff, according to Smith in an article on Softbank Miami by Refresh Miami, a digital website covering the local tech industry and WLRN news partner. The major fund had invested $8 million in Smith-Griffin’s company, which was officially headquartered in Boston.
Superintendents, salespeople and consultants
Other prominent AllHere creditors from South Florida include a current Miami-Dade schools lobbyist and a former Broward County schools superintendent, according to court documents.
A firm called Wellington Lynn, LLC is listed in bankruptcy files and is registered to Robert Runcie, the Broward County schools superintendent at the time of the Parkland massacre. He was indicted in April 2021 by a state grand jury, looking into school-safety funding failures, for perjury. The state dropped the charge last summer, after Runcie admitted to making misleading statements. He did not plead guilty.
Runcie, who now runs a national education organization, didn’t respond to several requests for an interview. It’s not clear from bankruptcy documents how much Runcie’s firm was owed or what work it did for AllHere, if any.
A lobbyist for Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Tom Cerra, leads the firm, Florida School Services, in Miami, and did work for AllHere.
Reached by phone, Cerra confirmed his firm marketed AllHere to Florida school districts.
“It didn’t go well,” he said. “We didn’t place them anywhere.”
He said AllHere was “preoccupied with other things.” WLRN asked Cerra how Carvalho was involved with AllHere.
“I have the utmost respect for his honesty and professional conduct in every matter,” he said. “But I don’t know what went on with AllHere out in L.A. I had no relationship to that.”
READ MORE: Los Angeles superintendent Alberto Carvalho placed on paid leave during federal probe
A lesser-known firm in the mix is ABC Educational Consulting Group, LLC. It’s registered to consultant Stanley Simon, based in Boynton Beach.
Like Gonzalez-Diego, Simon began consulting for AllHere in the spring of 2024, after the chatbot’s launch.
Simon attended events for two New Jersey school districts, and even employed a well-known subconsultant: the former New York City schools chancellor, Richard Carranza. After Carvalho famously reneged on his commitment to leave Miami schools for New York’s in 2018, Carranza was hired in Carvalho’s stead.
WLRN reached Simon by phone this week: “I have no comment. I know nothing — less than you do,” he said.
In bankruptcy filings, the company alleged it’s owed nearly $35,000.
Simon’s consulting work was “directed by and in coordination with Debra Kerr,” an invoice said.
The FBI raided Kerr’s registered home in Southwest Ranches on the same day agents searched Carvalho’s on the West Coast. The search warrants remain sealed by federal prosecutors.
Carvalho and Kerr were friends dating back to the 2000s, when she worked as a lobbyist for textbook company Pearson.
The 74 million, an education nonprofit outlet that broke the story of AllHere’s implosion, uncovered a press release from 2010, showing how Kerr gave Carvalho and Miami-Dade students “front row access” to an original print of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
Kerr and Carvalho’s friendship continued throughout his time as Miami’s, then LA’s superintendent, the Miami Herald reported. The superintendent is prominently featured on Kerr’s social media.
In 2022, Smith-Griffin, the CEO, hired Kerr as AllHere’s part-time “Chief Growth Officer,” according to an employment form. She had a $180,000 annual salary.
Kerr’s role was to sell AllHere’s product — a chatbot intended to combat absenteeism and engage with families — to school districts. Kerr has said she helped land the major contract with LAUSD when Carvalho was superintendent, which the Herald reports is being examined by federal agents.
WLRN reporters visited Kerr’s house in Broward last month after the FBI raid and received no response at the front gate. Kerr said she is still owed $1.3 million in commission fees, according to files, related to the LAUSD deal.
How Miami-Dade schools funded AllHere
One of AllHere’s most prominent contracts, preceding its $6 million agreement in L.A., was with the Miami-Dade County School Board.
AllHere’s success was born out of Miami’s anxiety.
Coming out of the worst of Covid, Miami school board members looked for a way to retain public school students, who were leaving in droves to charter and private schools. Charter schools gained roughly 5,000 students from October 2021 to 2022, according to district data.
Meanwhile, chronic absenteeism — which the state defines as missing 18 school days — soared to 29% of students in the 2022-23 school year.
Officials wanted a tool that would help teachers and staff communicate with families easier regarding attendance and hoped direct communication would be a selling point for parents to keep their children in district-run schools.
The goal was to “re-engage our most vulnerable students,” including chronically absent ones, the district’s request for proposal said.
They wanted a software that could transcend language barriers.
“Parents will have the ability to communicate in their preferred language which will then be translated to English for teachers,” the request for proposal says.
AllHere submitted a bid for the Miami-Dade contract in January 2022.
Carvalho left a month later to become superintendent in Los Angeles.
The district has not yet responded to a public records request seeking documents relating to this RFP.
The current superintendent, Jose Dotres, was in charge when, on Oct. 5, 2022, the district awarded the tech company a three-year contract of $1.89 million meant to establish the software system to communicate with parents. It passed 7-2.
Lubby Navarro was on the Miami-Dade County school board at the time and voted against the agreement.
One reason she disapproved was she felt there wasn’t enough information about the results AllHere had in other school districts.
“ We are awarding a $1.8 million contract and I want to make sure that they have national experience to capture and find these students,” said Navarro, who herself is under indictment for unlawful use of district funds. She’s pleaded not guilty.
“I want to know that they've done it in an urban school district with the complexities of Miami-Dade County Public Schools or similar because ultimately this is tied to funding that we lose every year,” Navarro said at the time.
District Chief Financial Officer Jon Steiger told her the RFP selection committee looked for the company that could provide “the best job [providing] that human interaction” and “can pivot from each community in an individualized way to be able to solve the problem on the ground.”
Navarro asked which other school systems had worked with AllHere.
Steiger said Broward County, Los Angeles and New York City districts had.
These are “the largest school districts in the country and some of the most complex,” Steiger said.
The Los Angeles contract had not yet been approved yet.
WLRN also reviewed the contract Broward County Public Schools had with AllHere, which was supposed to provide "community engagement related to attendance concerns.” The contract was for 7 months, between 2021 and 2022 and cost $48,000.
By summer 2024, AllHere’s downfall was on full display: the CEO had left, the staff furloughed, a whistleblower complaint filed about student data at risk in L.A.
In September 2024, the company was in bankruptcy court, fighting over whatever funds were left.
Two months later, the Miami-Dade County school board voted successfully to debar business with AllHere “due to abandonment of its contract with the School Board … and failure to deliver the required services,” according to the meeting agenda.
No product was ever produced in Miami, according to officials.
Less than two weeks after Miami debarred AllHere, its CEO was arrested on fraud charges.
