Your board will not always set the conditions of a superintendent's departure. The options your district has in that moment depend almost entirely on decisions made long before any vacancy appears.
When Alberto Carvalho resigned effective June 21, 2026, under an active federal investigation, the Los Angeles Unified board did not launch a search. Three days later, it voted unanimously to name Andres Chait, who had been serving as acting superintendent since February, as the district's permanent leader. The speed is worth examining: it was not improvisation.
The situation that ended Carvalho's tenure developed over two years. LAUSD had unveiled an AI tutoring chatbot called "Ed," built by a startup named AllHere. The tool went offline within months as the company failed. Education Week reported the initiative cost approximately $3 million. Federal investigators raided Carvalho's home and office. He resigned that June, maintaining he had not been charged.
Chait was an available and defensible appointment because of what the district had built before the vacancy existed. He began as a kindergarten teacher at Queen Anne Place Elementary School, rose to elementary principal and regional superintendent, and most recently led operations for the district. He has never worked outside Los Angeles Unified.
That career arc is not a credential gap. In an emergency succession, the board cannot verify a candidate's institutional fit under time pressure. Chait's value was not his resume relative to a national pool; it was that the board, the principals, and union leadership already knew how he operated. That trust is an asset that takes years to build and cannot be imported.
The unanimous vote mattered for a separate reason. A divided board compounds uncertainty; principals plan differently when leadership is contested. Unanimity allows the district to state, in public and to its own staff, that the transition is resolved. That clarity has operational value: it allows budget conversations to proceed, allows the central office to make decisions, and prevents the district from beginning a new school year with a governance question mark overhead.
What a skeptical board member would say
Three days is not a search. Any board willing to normalize emergency appointments as an alternative to deliberate process risks applying the same logic in calmer conditions. Urgency is a plausible reason; it is also a plausible cover for a decision the board did not want to defend publicly.
This is a legitimate concern, and the correct response is not to dismiss it. In a planned transition, a national search is the right process. The point of the LAUSD appointment is not that emergency succession is preferable; it is that the board's options were determined before the emergency. LAUSD had a viable appointment because someone invested in internal leadership development over years. A district that has not made that investment will face the same pressure with fewer choices.
Succession Readiness: Five Questions for Your Board
Answer these before a vacancy exists, not after it arrives.
Internal pipeline: Does your district have at least two senior administrators the board has formally assessed as superintendent-capable within the past two years? Informal consideration does not count: the assessment should be on record, with documented strengths and development gaps.
Board familiarity: Can a majority of board members describe, specifically, what each of those individuals handles well and where they would need support? If the board cannot answer this, it does not have a bench; it has a list of names.
Emergency authority: Does your board policy permit a permanent or temporary appointment without a mandated public search, under defined conditions? If not, a unanimous board cannot act quickly without a policy change first, and a policy change during a governance crisis is a worse problem than the vacancy.
Technology accountability: If a technology initiative commissioned by your district were to fail publicly or attract federal scrutiny, does your vendor contract establish clear accountability before the district must respond? The AllHere situation provides a reference case for what ambiguous accountability produces.
Legal protocol: Has your general counsel briefed the board on its obligations if a sitting administrator comes under federal investigation? This conversation belongs before a crisis, not during one.
A succession plan that addresses only planned retirements is an assumption that the future will arrive politely. The gap it leaves is exactly the gap LAUSD closed in three days.