Superintendent, Los Angeles Unified School District

In February, Carvalho took the reins as Superintendent of the nation’s second largest school district. Carvalho, who spent 14 years as Superintendent of the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, takes over a district almost in a state of perpetual crisis. The district’s total student enrollment of about 430,000 is way down from a peak of 737,000 in 2002; state funding is largely tied to enrollment. He also will have to grapple with a long-term structural deficit that has been papered over with hundreds of millions of dollars in government pandemic aid. Carvalho came to South Florida from Portugal at age 17, then worked his way up from a science and math teaching job.

YEARS ON THE LA500: 1