MIAMI — A South Florida lobbyist who sold hundreds of thousands worth of textbooks to the Miami-Dade County school district has surfaced as a key figure in the FBI investigation of Los Angeles public schools superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who once held the same position here.

Debra Kerr, an education consultant, was launched into public view on Wednesday when FBI agents searched her home in Southwest Ranches in Broward County at the same time agents carried out related searches of Carvalho’s home and school district office in Los Angeles.

“She knew Carvalho well — they got a long very well,” said Marta Perez, a longtime member of the Miami-Dade School Board who lost her seat in 2024. “She was a very nice, sweet lady. I would see her at the School Board meetings when she was there for a contract. She was very professional, but she wasn’t in the big leagues like the (education) lobbyists in Tallahassee.”

A retired Miami-Dade school district employee close to Carvalho said Kerr was occasionally seen in his executive office in the Miami-Dade School Board building off Biscayne Boulevard and was also friendly with his wife, Maria.

“She had access,” said the former employee, who did not want to be identified.

Kerr and Carvalho came to know each other when she was a lobbyist for Pearson Education, a large textbook publisher, in the 2000s, and he served as the Miami-Dade schools superintendent for 14 years before leaving for the top job in Los Angeles in February 2022. After he left, Kerr started working as a sales representative for AllHere Education, a startup education technology company.

Their lives intersected this week in the FBI corruption probe that sources say centers on Kerr’s landing a $6 million artificial-intelligence contract with the Los Angeles Unified School District when Carvalho was superintendent there — shortly before AllHere Education filed for bankruptcy liquidation in August 2024. The contract was AllHere’s biggest asset, according to an 18-page list of creditors filed in bankruptcy court in Delaware.

In November 2024 — eight months after Carvalho staged a media blitz promoting the AI chatbot called “Ed” — the startup company’s founder, Joanna Smith-Griffin, was charged with defrauding investors. She now appears to be negotiating a plea deal with federal prosecutors in New York, according to court records. It is unclear if Smith-Griffin, who was charged with fleecing $10 million from investors in AllHere Education, is cooperating with federal authorities.

Smith-Griffin retained Kerr as a sales representative for AllHere in 2022. Kerr was credited with closing the AI-tech deal with the LA school district; she and Carvalho touted the chatbot as a tool to combat student absenteeism.

But in AllHere’s bankruptcy case in Delaware, Kerr claims she was stiffed out of her $630,000 commission fee. Her son, Richard Kerr, an employee of AllHere, claims the company owed him $6,750.

Kerr, 63, who started her own education consulting company, LeadershipMax, LLC, eight years ago, did not respond to an email. Carvalho, 61, also could not be reached for comment. Smith-Griffin’s defense attorney also did not respond to an email query.

Neither Carvalho nor Kerr has been charged with a crime. But the FBI investigation, even if it leads to no charges ever being brought, has already taken a toll on Carvalho’s career as the top administrator of the nation’s second-largest school district.

On Friday, the L.A. school board, after holding two closed-door emergency sessions on Thursday and Friday, placed Carvalho on indefinite paid administrative leave. He makes $440,000 a year. A senior school district official, Andres Chait, was named interim superintendent.

Unlike Carvalho, who joined California Gov. Gavin Newsom last year in condemning the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants in Los Angeles, Kerr is an unknown figure. That is, until the FBI searched her $1.4 million Southwest Ranches home on Wednesday as part of its Los Angeles investigation into Carvalho.

Had child with Bob Marley guitarist, report says

This week, The New York Post turned the spotlight on Kerr.

The prose was classic Post: “The federal probe into LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has swept up a Florida consultant who had a child with Bob Marley’s legendary guitarist — a son who later became a Hollywood actor.

“The woman is Debra Kerr, a Jamaica-born education consultant and former Miss Jamaica runner-up whose son, David “Davo” Kerr Jr., is a Los Angeles-based rapper and actor. Davo’s father is Junior Marvin, the legendary guitarist for Bob Marley & The Wailers.

“Davo appeared in the 2024 biopic ‘Bob Marley: One Love,’ in which he portrayed his own father Marvin, the guitarist who joined Bob Marley & The Wailers in 1977 after famously turning down an offer to join Stevie Wonder’s band.”

After the flashy intro, the Post pivots to Kerr’s LinkedIn profile, which describes her as CEO of LeadershipMax LLC, based in Hollywood, Florida.

Before striking out on her own, Kerr held senior roles at education publishing giant Pearson, where she rose to senior vice president for North America, and later served as head of sales at Age of Learning, the company behind ABCmouse, a subscription-based learning program for children ages 2 to 8.

“Eight years ago, I transitioned from executive leadership in K–12 EdTech to independent consulting— driven by a passion to work more closely with the people and products shaping the future of learning,” she wrote on her Linkedin page.

“Since then, I’ve had the privilege of partnering with founders, product teams, and school and district leaders to bring innovative ideas to life and help move impactful solutions from concept to classroom.”

Among them: Carvalho.

In one Linkedin post, Kerr, standing shoulder to shoulder with Carvalho, praises him after he delivered a speech three years ago: “Superintendent’s Opening of Schools Address was brilliant #schoolleadership @LASchools”

Broward home raid

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.

Media reports out of Los Angeles chronicling AllHere Education’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 AllHere’s founder, Smith-Griffin, duped investors into thinking the company was a thriving educational start-up harnessing artificial intelligence while in fact it 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 fizzled after AllHere went bust — 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.

When AllHere Education filed for bankruptcy in Delaware in August 2024, the AI contract with the Los Angeles Unified School District was 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 for AllHere in bankruptcy filings.

Miami-Dade Schools connection

Before the company’s collapse, the Miami-Dade schools system also inked a $1.8 million, three-year deal with AllHere to create communication software to help at-risk students. A school system spokesperson said that contract never came to fruition. However, the Miami-Dade school district is listed as a creditor in AllHere’s bankruptcy filing, though it doesn’t show a dollar amount.

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.

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