The Brief

Alberto Carvalho, the superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District, has asked to be restored to his position after being placed on paid administrative leave last month. The request was included in his first public statement since federal agents searched his home and office in late February.

“Mr. Carvalho respects the rule of law and the investigative process and has always acted in the best interests of students and within the bounds of the law,” read a statement provided by a spokesperson for Carvalho through the law firm Holland & Knight.

The statement said the government’s investigation is ongoing and no evidence presented by prosecutors supports allegations that Carvalho violated federal law.

The statement, first reported by the L.A. Times, was released nearly two weeks after federal agents searched Carvalho’s San Pedro home and district offices. The reason for the searches is unknown. A DOJ spokesperson said the agency has a court-authorized warrant but declined to provide additional details.

The L.A. searches are linked to a search of a South Florida home the same day. That property, first identified by local media outlets, belongs to a woman associated with the company LAUSD contracted with to create a short-lived AI tool. “Ed” was designed to be a "personal assistant" capable of nudging students who were falling behind and providing resources for learning.

Within three months of its March 2024 debut, the company behind Ed, AllHere, furloughed the bulk of its staff; its CEO was later charged with fraud.

How the district responded

Two days after the search, the LAUSD board voted unanimously to place Carvalho on paid administrative leave “pending investigation,” and appointed longtime administrator Andres Chait as acting superintendent.

The district has not responded to LAist’s questions about the reasoning for placing Carvalho on leave or whether the “investigation” referenced is federal or internal.

“Mr. Carvalho remains confident that the evidence will ultimately demonstrate that he acted appropriately and in the best interests of students,” read the statement. “We hope the school board reinstates him promptly to his position as superintendent.”

In response to LAist’s questions about Carvalho’s desire to be reinstated, an LAUSD spokesperson wrote, “the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education respects his right to defend himself.”

LAUSD Board President Scott Schmerelson did not respond to LAist’s request for an interview or comment about Carvalho’s statement.

Carvalho has been superintendent of LAUSD since 2022, and the board renewed his contract in 2025. His tenure at LAUSD has included a number of wins for the district, including gains in test scores, participation in AP classes and a decline in the rate of students chronically missing school.

“The achievements and success of the students, teachers, and staff of Los Angeles Unified remain his foremost focus,” the statement read. “Mr. Carvalho also expresses his sincere gratitude to all those who have extended their well wishes and prayers.”

An insurance crisis continues to rattle California’s foster care system, threatening to displace thousands of vulnerable children.

Since 2024, more than two dozen nonprofits that recruit, train and support foster parents have shuttered across 13 counties, according to the California Department of Social Services.

Counties have historically relied on the licensed nonprofits, known as foster family agencies, to place children — especially those in need of intensive support — in certified homes until they are adopted or reunified with their birth families.

Their closures come two years after a key insurance carrier backed out of covering foster family agencies, citing rising legal costs. The company, Nonprofits Insurance Alliance of California, covered approximately 90% of the more than 200 foster family agencies operating throughout the state, leaving them scrambling to find a replacement.

No other California insurers have stepped in since then, forcing foster family agencies to secure coverage from companies outside the state — and sometimes, outside the country. In an unregulated market, that’s meant that agencies have seen increases of 200 to 400% in their liability coverage. Many are reporting cost hikes of more than $350,000 in annual premiums.

The Legislature last year approved a one-time $31.5 million allocation to buoy the agencies as they face unsustainable premiums, but the money has run out. Assemblymember James Ramos, a Democrat from San Bernardino, and Sen. María Elena Durazo, a Democrat from Los Angeles, recently requested another $30 million in relief funding.

Tony Iagmin holds a three-month-old baby at his home in San Diego’s Lakeside neighborhood on Feb. 23, 2026. Tony and Sara Iagmin are fostering the baby.

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But without any long-term policy solutions, advocates warn that the whole system is at risk of collapsing. It would start with some or all of the remaining foster family agencies closing. Foster parents, lacking the support that’s needed to sustain them, could then exit the child welfare system altogether and kids would face even more instability, the advocates say. And medically fragile children — including kids with feeding tubes, developmental disabilities or drug dependencies from their mothers — are especially at risk because counties don’t typically have sufficient resources to provide that level of care.

“It would be an absolute crisis if the foster family agencies closed,” said Diana Boyer, managing director of research and policy at the County Welfare Directors Association of California. “Foster children are the state’s children. We all collectively need to be doing more to support them and ensure that they have homes and families to go to.”

The crisis is tied to California’s attempts to provide redress to survivors of sexual abuse. Legislation passed in 2019 lifted the statute of limitations, allowing survivors to sue government agencies. Thousands of lawsuits have been filed since then, and hefty payouts have driven up insurance costs for public agencies across the board. Schools were among the first to feel the pinch from rising costs for insurance to cover liability from the suits.

The Nonprofits Insurance Alliance of California stopped renewing insurance policies following a $25 million payout to three children after a jury found that a foster family agency in Santa Rosa failed to protect them from sexual abuse. The group had also made a mostly failed effort to reform aspects of California law related to insurance and liability.

'Our collective responsibility'

Roughly 300 foster family agencies operate throughout California, providing critical services to approximately 6,500 of the state’s 45,000 foster children.

Counties run many of their child welfare placements through the community-based nonprofits because of their quality of care — especially for kids with the highest needs.

If a child is removed from their home in the middle of the night due to abuse or neglect, foster family agencies quickly step in with supportive homes that are “at the ready,” said Pete Weldy, chief executive officer at the California Alliance of Child & Family Services, which represents roughly 200 foster family agencies around the state.

After initial placement, the agencies continue to work with foster families and kids to provide sustained support, including around-the-clock care, crisis assistance, and consistent case management.

When an agency shutters, the child’s placement could be disrupted.

“That’s one of the untold stories of this whole crisis,” Weldy said. “It could mean that the youth has to move to a different county, to a different foster family. They could be uprooted from their family. They might have to change schools, maybe move communities, lose their friends.” The disruption, he added, can often exacerbate behavioral health needs. “Eventually, it could lead to the worst outcome, which is that the child ends up unhoused,” he added.

If counties are unable to find a placement, Weldy said the child may end up in a hotel, hospital, or conference room.

“This is the state’s responsibility and really, therefore, all of our collective responsibility to make sure these really vulnerable kids and youth have what they need to thrive,” he said. “And that’s where foster family agencies do such an incredible job.”

Foster families 'knew who to turn to'

Tony and Sara Iagmin play with the baby they are fostering at their home in San Diego’s Lakeside neighborhood on Feb. 23, 2026.

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Sara and Tony Iagmin have fostered 45 children since 2013, when they started working with Angels, a San Diego-based foster family agency that recently closed due to the insurance crisis. Over that period of time, they worked with three case managers from the agency that would make weekly visits to the child or children they were currently fostering. That consistency served them and their foster children well, they said.

“We knew who to turn to and how to get support for everything that came up,” Sara Iagmin said.

They fear that the increasing number of agency closures will result in more kids falling through the cracks and hurt foster parents, especially those who are new to the child welfare system and may need additional support.

“Foster family agencies are like AAA and the county is like the DMV,” Tony Iagmin said. “They have good workers, but it’s a lot of bureaucracy.”

Since Angels closed, the Iagmins started working directly with San Diego County. They said they feel well-equipped to handle the shift since they’ve been foster parents for so long, but will miss the community they found through Angels.

Tony and Sara Iagmin at their home in San Diego’s Lakeside neighborhood.

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Photos of families Sara and Tony Iagmin have worked with over the years hang on a wall at their home in San Diego’s Lakeside neighborhood on Feb. 23, 2026.

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In Placer County, Sarah and Michael Prince have worked with the foster family agency Koinonia Family Services since 2016. After struggling with infertility for over a decade, the couple decided to attend the agency’s orientation.

“I came home buzzing,” said Sarah Prince. “My intuition said, ‘This is my home.’”

It took them two years to go through the agency’s certification process. Since then, the couple has taken in 13 foster children, four of whom they ended up adopting.

“I couldn’t have done it without a foster family agency,” said Sarah Prince. “It’s an extra layer of protection for you. They are your family. When the things fall, it’s the knowing that you have somebody to call. It’s consistency for these kids that haven’t had consistency because your foster family agency workers don’t change.”

Laura Richardson, a manager at Koinonia Family Services, said the statewide agency works with roughly 360 homes, 99 of which are not taking placements. On any given day, they serve around 200 youth in their foster family homes.

According to Richardson, the organization’s insurance increased by 242% — from $272,000 to $933,000 per year — since the Nonprofits Insurance Alliance of California stopped renewing their policy. It’s meant that they’ve had to rescind their licenses in three cities, transferring those families to other offices that are still operating.

Richardson said they’re trying to hold out for as long as they can for the state to come up with a solution. But as more and more agencies shutter, she worries that the homeless population will increase for youth.

“I worry about the safety net for these most vulnerable youth going away,” she said. “It’s going to stress other parts of the system. So the state is going to have to pay for it somewhere. My hope is that we can fix what’s good about what we already have before we lose it.”

Cayla Mihalovich is a California Local News fellow.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

On Wednesday, the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced member nations would release a total of 400 million barrels from their strategic reserves of oil as the war in Iran continues to cause the worst disruption to energy markets in decades.

The unanimous decision by the members of the IEA, which represents some of the world's biggest oil-consuming nations, is meant to address the acute disruption in oil trade caused by the war. It's the largest release of crude oil the IEA has ever coordinated, and only the sixth time the group has released oil to balance crude markets.

IEA executive director Fatih Birol said on Wednesday that the decision by IEA members, who together control some 1.8 billion barrels of stockpiled oil, is a "major action" meant to alleviate the disruption of oil markets.

"But to be clear, the most important thing for a return to stable flows of oil and gas is the resumption of transit through the Strait of Hormuz," he said.

Details about the timing and the amounts of oil each country will contribute have not yet been announced.

Global oil prices, which have been highly volatile for days, dropped below $87 on Tuesday night, after The Wall Street Journal first reported about the pending IEA recommendation, but were hovering just under $90 after Birol spoke on Wednesday morning. That price had been around $70 before the war began, spiked to nearly $120 late Sunday night, and fell to around $90 in recent days.

The IEA was formed in the wake of the oil crisis of the 1970s. It serves as a sort of counterpart to OPEC, the group of oil-producing nations that work together to coordinate production. While OPEC represents the interests of oil producers, the IEA was established to protect the interests of oil consumers. It coordinates national stockpiles to create a buffer in the case of an extreme shock to global oil supplies — precisely like the one the world is experiencing today.

The group has 32 member countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, Japan, Korea and most nations in Europe. More than a dozen countries are affiliated with the IEA as "association countries," including China, India, Thailand and Kenya. All together, the IEA estimates that its countries account for 80% of global energy demand.

A requirement for membership in the IEA is that countries must commit to maintaining substantial reserves of crude oil or distilled petroleum products, enough to cover at least 90 days of that country's exports, as well as undertake programs to reduce dependency on oil.

Today, some members of the IEA — including the U.S. — are net oil exporters, producing more oil than they need. That means under IEA rules they aren't required to keep stockpiles. But the U.S., which is both the world's largest consumer of oil and the world's largest producer, still maintains the world's largest known stockpile.

The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) were last tapped in 2022, during the most recent IEA-coordinated release of oil, in response to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It was only the fourth time the SPR had ever been tapped.

Both the Biden administration and then the Trump administration have signaled plans to refill the SPR, but officials have reported that damage to the underground salt caverns that hold the oil has slowed down those efforts.

Currently, the U.S. SPR has about 415 million barrels, out of a total capacity of 715 million barrels.

Oil markets in crisis 

Oil prices have swung wildly over the past week, as ship traffic came to a near-standstill in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway through which approximately 20% of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas typically travels. Iran's closure of the strait is blocking millions of barrels of oil per day from reaching markets.

And it's having knock-on effects; countries like Iraq and Kuwait have had to stop producing oil in some fields because with storage tanks full and no ability to send ships through the strait, there is simply nowhere to put the oil.

Some oil is being redirected, including through a pipeline Saudi Arabia can use to send oil to the Red Sea for export. The U.S. has waived sanctions on Russian crude to ease pressure on markets. Now, IEA members are also helping rebalance markets by tapping their stockpiles

However, the oil in those stockpiles cannot all be pulled out immediately; there is a physical limit on how quickly it can flow. And oil analysts agree that, as Birol acknowledged, that all the world's responses put together cannot fully compensate for the disruption created by the Iran war.

"There is simply no substitute for restoring access through the Strait of Hormuz," Angie Gildea, the global oil and gas leader for accounting giant KPMG, told NPR in a statement sent by email earlier this week. "The tools at our disposal, including strategic reserves, rerouting some exports and floating inventories, can provide some relief at the margins, but they are not structural solutions."

Copyright 2026 NPR

Orange County has filed a lawsuit accusing its main mental health partner, Mind OC, of squandering more than $60 million in public funds.

Specifically, the county says the nonprofit group, commonly known as Be Well OC:

• Fraudulently billed millions for services it didn’t provide.
• Jacked up rental rates for county-funded behavioral health providers. 
• Routinely put its own financial interests ahead of the vulnerable populations it was supposed to protect.

Why it matters

The allegations came Tuesday in a cross-complaint filed against Mind OC in a bitter legal dispute over what was supposed to be a model public-private mental health campus in the city of Orange.

LAist reached out to Mind OC for a response. A representative said they were not surprised by the lawsuit, and were reviewing it carefully. They also called the county’s counter-complaint “reactionary,” and said it was the county who breached its agreement with Mind OC at the Orange health campus, causing the nonprofit “significant damages.”

In all, the county is seeking the return of up to $64.5 million in public funds and property it says it entrusted to the organization, according to the complaint. The county also wants to wrest control of the Orange campus from the nonprofit.

The background

Mind OC, which does business as Be Well OC, was launched in 2017 with the goal of creating a world class mental health system in Orange County, including two campuses where, they hoped, patients using public services and those with private insurance would both seek care.

The Be Well OC initiative had strong support from the O.C. Board of Supervisors, including disgraced former Supervisor Andrew Do, who was a member of the board's ad hoc committee on mental health services at the time.

The first campus opened in Orange in 2021. The initial agreement between Mind OC and the county called for granting the organization a 60-year lease for $1 per year in exchange for Mind OC designing and overseeing construction of the mental health campus in Orange. (The actual cost of construction was covered by the county, private hospitals, and the county’s Medi-Cal provider, CalOptima.)

But the relationship soon soured. The county claimed in 2024 that Mind OC was in default, and then canceled the organization’s lease in February 2025. In the middle of the two actions, Mind OC sued.

A second Be Well OC campus was scheduled to open in Irvine last year, but has been held up, largely stemming from the disputes between Mind OC and the county.

On Tuesday afternoon, just hours after the county filed its complaint, Irvine held a special meeting where the City Council voted 5 to 2 to support the immediate opening of the Irvine Be Well campus — with Mind OC as the operator.

The nonprofit took in $50 million in revenue last year from providing mental health services in Orange County, and has $182 million in assets, according to its latest tax filing.

The legal allegations

Here are some of the major allegations in the county’s complaint:

The county alleges that Mind OC fraudulently billed the county $7.4 million for services it didn’t fully deliver. 

The county gave Mind OC a $7.7 million no-bid contract in 2019 to design an innovative mental health system. In the county’s complaint, it says Mind OC didn’t document its work, properly maintain records, or justify its invoices on the project. The county also alleged that Mind OC sought to turn in, as its primary deliverable, a document authored by county staff. Ultimately, the county paid Mind OC $7.4 million of the contract.

The county also alleges that Mind OC charged excessive rents to the county’s service providers at the Be Well campus in Orange in violation of its lease agreement. 

The county claims that Mind OC misused taxpayer funds by charging the county’s service providers on the campus rent that equated to “approximately double Mind OC’s operating expenses and well beyond market rate.”

Mind OC said in its prior legal complaint that the county “approved the subleases it now complains about.”

The county claims there was a conflict of interest when Mind OC subcontracted with a person with ties to Do.

Mind OC subcontracted in 2020 with the then-girlfriend of Do’s chief of staff, Chris Wangsaporn. She failed to deliver, as previously reported by LAist. In its complaint, the county said the contract with Josie Batres, who is now married to Wangsaporn, was “emblematic of conflicts of interest that cloud the venture from its inception.”

Batres was paid $275,000 over two years to run community listening sessions and submit reports to help the county increase access to publicly-funded mental health services. County officials say the work was never turned in.

After LAist’s reporting on the matter, the county demanded a refund, which Mind OC paid in November 2024.

In its complaint this week, the county said “Mind OC promised an investigation into the misappropriation, a promise that, to date, has gone unfulfilled.”

Other complaints laid out in the lawsuit against Mind OC include allegations that the nonprofit violated patient privacy on the Orange health campus by installing cameras in service provider areas and having property management staff check in patients and screen phone calls.

The county also said Mind OC failed to meet a major goal of the Be Well campus — to have a quarter of all patients served come with their own private insurance, according to the lawsuit and a 2024 audit.

“Mind OC, a non-profit, took positions designed to maximize its profits at the expense of County taxpayers and residents in dire need of affordable mental health services,” a county spokesperson wrote in a news release.

How to watchdog your local government

One of the best things you can do to hold officials accountable is pay attention. Your City Council, board of supervisors, school board and more all hold public meetings that anybody can attend. These are times you can talk to your elected officials directly and hear about the policies they’re voting on that affect your community.

• Read tips on how to get involved.
• The Orange County Board of Supervisors meets on alternating Tuesdays at 9:30 a.m. at 400 West Civic Center Drive, Santa Ana. You can check out the O.C. Board of Supervisors full calendar here.
• Learn how to submit a public comment to the O.C. Board of Supervisors.

Typically on the morning of Eid-ul-Fitr, the festival that marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan, Muslims wear their best clothes and head to parks or convention centers across Southern California.

After the prayer and special sermon, there is another revered tradition to be followed.

Donuts.

After a month of fasting, Muslims wait for the glazed donut for their first breakfast.

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As in, glazed donuts. Hundreds and hundreds — even thousands — of them are handed out by volunteers as people line up. The donut of choice? Krispy Kremes, although it’s not mandated.

It’s a specifically SoCal tradition that has been happening, some tell me, for at least 20 years.

Unity through donuts

Sweet treats are a staple of Eid across the world.

When family and friends stop over, they are greeted with tables laden with different sweet dishes.

In South Asian households, gulab jamun (fried dough balls swimming in a sugar syrup) take pride of place. Arab families make maamoul, a date mixture pressed between shortbread cookie dough. Cookies, called kuih, are popular in Southeast Asian households, and in Somali homes, halwa is served.

In SoCal, a region with Muslims from many different backgrounds, deciding what a mosque should serve after prayers can be tricky. A donut is a neat solution.

“ We have a very diverse community, so some of the desserts can become a little too ethnic for one group versus the other,” said Alam Akhtar, chairman at the Islamic Society of Orange County. “Donut is that one food that just cuts across all ethnicities and all taste buds.”

It’s also a way for their American identity to come to the fore.

In recent years, the Islamic Society of Orange County has switched to donuts from small businesses that pepper the Little Saigon area.

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Food, Akhtar said, has a way of uniting people from different cultures and plays an important role in celebrations.

 ”Feeding people in general is considered a very spiritual act,” he said. “It brings people together. More hands in a plate has more blessings.”

Last year, the Islamic Society of Orange County mosque in Garden Grove — affectionately called the “mother mosque” of Southern California — decided to change things up a bit and bought pastries from Porto’s Bakery.

It did not go well. People wanted their donuts and made their point of view clear.

 "This year, we're going to aim for donuts again, based on popular demand and the request from the crowd,” said Hassan Mukhlis, the mosque president.

Boxes and boxes of donuts to feed the crowd of 3,000 people.

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Krispy Kreme has been the mosque’s go-to vendor for the past decade or so, but in recent years, it has looked to support a local, small business to buy the 3,000 donuts needed to feed the crowd that gathers. The mosque is located in Little Saigon, an ethnic enclave with predominantly Vietnamese immigrants, so it plans to order from a Vietnamese bakery.

Traditions live on ... with a twist

Aliya Amin grew up attending the Islamic Society of Orange County and went on to teach at its weekend school. She now supplies desserts to the cafe on the mosque’s premises, Barakah Cafe.

The Gulab Jamun Donut available during Eid season at Bakes by Aliya.

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Her earliest memory of the donut lines after Eid prayers were when she was 9 years old. Now, the 29-year-old still says it's not Eid without the donuts. In her specialty microbakery, Bakes by Aliya, she takes the humble food and adds a creative, South Asian twist

Her version, Gulab Jamun Donut, is inspired by a gulab jamun, a fried dough ball that is soaked in a cardamom and saffron sugar syrup.

“ I essentially make a cake donut, which is cardamom cake flavored, and I have the gulab jamun sitting in the middle, and it's like the perfect balance of spiced but sweet,” Amin said.

She offers the donut only during the Eid season. It’s become one of her best sellers.

Donuts are for every age group, she said.

“I'm seeing adults eat it, too, you know, enjoying it just as much as kids,” Amin said.

The gulab jamun donuts have to be preordered by Sunday. To order, click here.