Napoleon participates in active shooter exercise

It's a parent's worst nightmare, a shooter at their child's school. A new initiative in North Dakota is running active shooter exercises across the state so that more schools can be ready.

A masked gunman walks into the school and begins firing, that's scenario one at the Napoleon Public School exercise.

"It can happen anywhere, so we just, we want to be prepared. It's kind of sad, but I'd rather be prepared for it than not prepared at all," said Richard Bjerklie, superintendent.

Law enforcement from five different agencies entered the building, one or two at a time, and worked together to flush out the shooter. Though not everything went perfectly.

"It pointed out that we do need to get prepared on some things, we all had different tactical maneuvers that we wanted to do," said Andrew Tunheim, Wishek police chief.

On the school's side, they're looking at a new room number system.

"When response came in, they were having trouble identifying which room cause they were saying over the radios 'hey, it's in room 114,' or 'hey, it's in the science room,' so they had different methodologies for identifying areas of the school," said Daniel Schwartz, Logan County emergency manager.

They ran scenarios throughout the morning so that officers can be better prepared for any situation.

These exercises across the state are being made possible by a round of federal grants to help schools deal with shootings.