LAUSD renews Supt. Alberto Carvalho's role

The Los Angeles Board of Education agreed Wednesday in a 7-0 vote to retain L.A. schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho for another four years with the details of his contract still under negotiation.

- HOWARD BLUME

STUDENTS arrive on the first day of school at LAUSD's Maya Angelou Community High School on Aug. 14.

In a brief announcement, Carvalho, 60, said he would not be seeking a raise for his role in leading the nation's second-largest school system. His salary is $440,000 per year. The perks of the contract include an annual $50,000 retirement annuity over and above his salary.

"I want to be very clear with this board and this community that there's nothing to negotiate," Carvalho said in brief remarks after the announcement. "I'm not seeking, nor will I accept, a salary increase as part of my compensation or additional benefits. My contract is what my contract is, and the most important contract I have is with a beautiful community of Los Angeles, our staff, our students and our families."

Carvalho has become especially visible in recent months as the leader of a school system that possibly has more recent immigrant families than any other in the nation. Los Angeles has become a center of immigration enforcement activity and also a locus of resistance to it — from Mayor Karen Bass to activists in the streets.

Carvalho — who was a teenage immigrant from Portugal — has said he would put his job at stake if necessary to protect and defend immigrant families, saying that standing by immigrant students and their families is "on the right side of history."

On that issue, he is fully aligned with the elected Board of Education.

Other issues ahead include ongoing efforts to improve academic achievement, in which there has been recent progress on the basis of state standardized test scores.