Re-Elect
Mike
Hutchinson
Oakland School Board — District 4
Born and raised in Oakland. Over 25 years in our schools. The independent voice our kids need — now more than ever.
Oakland School Board — District 4
Born and raised in Oakland. Over 25 years in our schools. The independent voice our kids need — now more than ever.
Mike was born and raised in Oakland and is a proud graduate of OUSD. He attended Crocker Highlands Elementary, McChesney Junior High (now Edna Brewer), Oakland High, and graduated from Skyline High before matriculating to UC Berkeley. His mother was an Oakland kindergarten teacher and OEA leader for 40 years; his father taught at Laney College for over two decades; his brother taught in OUSD before switching careers to become a lawyer. Currently Mike’s nieces are students in OUSD and in four years his baby daughter will begin TK in OUSD.
Mike spent over 25 years working direct with youth in Oakland schools. When two schools he worked at were threatened with closure in 2012, he was fired for organizing a community meeting to save the school from closure. With the firing he realized that he couldn’t just work directly with youth, but that he had to focus on organizing and advocacy to ensure OUSD has the ability to equitably serve all students in every neighborhood. He co-founded the Oakland Public Education Network (OPEN), which became a founding member of the Journey for Justice National Alliance, through which he actively advocated for quality public schools in Oakland, statewide, and nationally.
He was first elected first to the Oakland School Board in District 5 in 2020. He helped lead OUSD through the pandemic and to a safe and equitable reopening, establishing the dashboard to publicly track COVID cases and authoring both the policy on testing and on vaccinations.
His family home that he’s lived in for 45 years was redistricted, so Mike ran and was elected to represent District 4 in 2022.
In 2023 and 2024 when Mike was Board President and Vice President and Chaired the Budget and Finance Committee, he led OUSD to negotiate at least a 15% raise with every union, pass balanced budgets, pay off the state loan early, and pass a fiscal systems audit which enabled OUSD to finally leave (state/county) receivership and regain full local control after 22 years. All while he delivered on his campaign promise by first authoring and passing a resolution to rescind the controversial school closure plan and the following year he authored and passed the 3R’s Resolution, a comprehensive plan to engage the community to restructure, re-envision, and redesign OUSD.
Since then, the current school board has rolled back the progress that had been made and has refused to follow through with the commitments made in the 3R’s Resolution. Unfortunately, OUSD is now again facing a crisis.
We have an opportunity with November’s elections to get OUSD back on track. Together we can use good governance, strong financial management, and meaningful community engagement to improve student outcomes and ensure that every student in every neighborhood has access to a high quality public school.
Oakland's school board continues to need a director who knows the system, keeps the receipts, and never backs down when kids' futures are on the line.
Mike has tracked, explained, and engaged around the OUSD budget for fifteen years. One of the key issues that he ran on in 2022 was to end the fiscal mismanagement, and he delivered. After being elected, Mike was Board President and then Vice President and Chaired the Budget and Finance Committee in 2023 and 2024. During those two years, by working closely with Superintendent Johnson-Trammell and Chief Business Officer Lisa Grant-Dawson, he led OUSD to negotiate at least a 15% raise with every union, pass balanced budgets, pay off the state loan early, and pass a fiscal systems audit which enabled OUSD to finally leave (state/county) receivership and regain full local control after 22 years. OUSD was no longer in crisis and there were plans in place to continue the work to ensure that every neighborhood has access to a quality sustainable community school.
Now under the current leadership, just a year after leaving receivership, OUSD is again back in crisis. This year the School Board passed a broken budget that will require $30M in mid-year spending cuts this winter, and projects $70M+ in yet-to-be-determined budget cuts by 2028-29. There is no plan and no clear path to long-term sustainability from the current leaders. Mike has consistently worked to move the Board to follow through with commitments and adopt a real fiscal solvency plan, even though he has often been the board's lone consistent voice demanding real numbers in writing — not verbal summaries, not spin. Oakland's kids can't learn if the lights go off. Mike will keep fighting for an honest, balanced budget and the implementation of a community driven strategic plan that ensures the fiscal stability that OUSD needs and deserves.
The School Board majority fired a successful superintendent on the same night it emerged from state receivership. Then it suspended the search for a replacement — in secret. Mike called it out every step of the way. Oakland's children deserve stability, not board-room drama. Mike will push for an inclusive, community-driven process for a permanent, qualified superintendent and a board culture of transparency, not closed-door deals that move the District backwards.
Mike has always run community-funded grassroots campaigns. He won't be bought by charter school operators, real estate developers, the local teachers union, or any outside interest group that wants to use Oakland's schools as a vehicle for profit or ideology above the needs of students. The only constituency Mike answers to is District 4 families. He believes that parents, teachers, and students should be driving the decisions that shape our schools.
Mike has successfully led the fight against a series of school closures plans since the two schools he worked at Maxwell Park Elementary and Santa Fe Elementary were closed in 2012 — and he'll continue to demand that any changes to the district's school footprint happen through a genuine community process, not midnight votes. Quality public schools are the heart of Oakland and should anchor every neighborhood. He supports the Sustainable Community Schools model: full-service, culturally relevant, community-designed schools that treat the whole child.
"We are poised to be the first district anyone's ever heard of to regain local control and then lose it again within a year. If we don't pass a balanced budget, County Superintendent Castro and the state will have no option other than to step in." — Mike Hutchinson
"In recent public meetings, OUSD board members have been unprepared and don't seem to understand the timeline or the stakes, with the notable exception of Mike Hutchinson."
"Hutchinson says the board president and district interim superintendent are not being transparent with the community about the financial strain of the OEA teachers' union contract and other financial challenges."
"One unlikely leader who seems ready for the conversation is board member Mike Hutchinson. He led the effort to rescind school closures in 2023 just hours after being sworn in as board president."
Mike has appeared on KQED, KTVU FOX 2, CBS San Francisco, and other local news stations to sound the alarm about OUSD's budget crisis and demand transparency from district leadership.
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With Mike
Mike is one of the most active school board members on social media — posting regularly about board votes, budget updates, school events, and community news. Follow him to get the unfiltered truth about what's happening in our schools.
Mike's Facebook page has 4,300+ followers and is updated multiple times a week with: