As Mayor of Berkeley, head of President Clinton's Western Regional Office of the U.S. Department of Education and a member of the Assembly Education Committee, Loni Hancock has devoted much of her career to developing public policies that support and improve public schools in the East Bay and throughout California.
- As head of the Western Regional Office of the U.S. Department of Education, Loni launched after-school, early reading preparation, college preparedness, and other initiatives. She helped schools in California receive millions of dollars in federal education funding.
- As Mayor of Berkeley, Loni Hancock led the effort to open Berkeley High School's first biotechnology academy in partnership with a major Berkeley company.
- As a member of the Assembly Committee on Education, Loni fought against tuition increases, elimination of outreach programs, and deep cuts to community college, CSU and UC budgets.
- Loni successfully fought for legislation to reduce the interest rate West Contra Costa Unified School District must pay the state in its repayment of a bailout loan. The reduction saves WCCUSD about $500,000 that now can serve children.
- Introduced legislation to more closely align California's standardized testing requirements with federal requirements to lessen the burden on our teachers and students.
- Understanding that a quality education requires access to quality resources, Loni authored a bill that would provide all California K-12 students with access to high quality online research databases and magazines.
- To help prepare our young people for the jobs of the future, Loni authored California's exciting new law to expand hands-on learning and career technical education so that we can better prepare our young people for college and careers and lower the unacceptably high dropout rate.
- Loni has served five years as the Chair of the Assembly Select Committee on Bridging the Achievement Gap.
- Introduced a bill to streamline attendance reporting requirements for school-based after school programs to help get programs up and running faster.
- As Mayor of Berkeley, Loni brought city funding to open a health clinic at Berkeley High School, to provide all students with access to healthcare.
- In order to keep our children safe at school, Loni authored a bill to increase funding to ensure that California's schools are seismically safe.
- Introduced legislation, which was ultimately incorporated in the state school bond measure passed in 2006, to encourage "green schools."
- Introduced legislation to expand the free and reduced school breakfast program to a universal program so that all elementary school students would have a healthy breakfast each morning.
- Won passage of a bill that requires labeling or notification of families if irradiated meats are served to children at school.
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