STONY BROOK, N.Y. (AP) — It's become a hallmark of terror attacks and school shootings: the fateful minutes or hours when the wounded are hunkered down, waiting for the violence to play out and for help to arrive.

In Monday's car-and-knife attack at Ohio State University, one of the 11 wounded victims hid in a campus building for nearly 90 minutes before police gave the all-clear and she could be treated. When a gunman opened fire at an Orlando, Florida, nightclub, in June, a woman sent a frantic text message to her mother saying she had been shot and couldn't stop the bleeding. She later died.

Such incidents are the impetus behind a new federal initiative to train everyone at schools and other public places — custodians, security guards and administrators — on how to treat gunshots, gashes and other injuries until actual EMTs can get to the scene.

"We don't want you to just hide and bleed to death like we saw in Orlando and other places," said Lawrence Zacarese, the assistant chief of police at Stony Brook University, which is spearheading training for school districts and colleges across the country. "We want you hiding and maintaining and doing some administration of first aid until we can get there."

At a training session Tuesday, paramedics and doctors brought in fake body parts — blood spurting from the wounds — to show staffers of a Long Island school district how to tie tourniquets and pack open wounds with whatever they have.

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/ordinary-people-trained-to-save-lives-in-shootings-attacks/article_bebdb7a5-5dab-516e-96ae-e55f935513d6.html

By MICHAEL BALSAMO Associated Press| November 30, 2016

Education Week--States Eye Greater Control Over K-12 Policy in Trump Era

Washington was already poised to return a lot more authority over K-12 policy to states, thanks to the Every Student Succeeds Act, slated to hit school districts next fall.

Now, with President-elect Donald Trump's victory, that process is only likely to accelerate.

State leaders aren't waiting for the new administration to name all its players or fill in the blanks on in-the-weeds policy details. They're already charging forward with the agendas they have been crafting since ESSA's passage a year ago.

"We don't know the general direction of the new administration," said Chris Minnich, the executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers. "But the commitment to coming up with high-quality [ESSA] plans is consistent across the chiefs. The resolve is to not worry so much about what the federal government is doing and to really put together high-quality plans so that when the federal government is ready to talk about these things, we know where we are."

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/11/30/states-eye-greater-control-over-k-12-policy.html

  By Daarel Burnette II and Alyson Klein|November 29, 2016