In recent years, school shootings in the United States have been too often at the top of the newsreel. Texas, in particular, has had their fair share, with the most recent being the Uvalde School shooting in May. Still, both state and federal gun laws haven’t changed. Now, Texas schools are sending home DNA kits with their students so that parents can identify them in case of an emergency. This has parents both fearful and angry.
Texas Schools To Send Emergency DNA Kits Home With Students
In the state of Texas, the school district is now sending home optional DNA kits with students. These kits are supposedly for the parents to be able to identify their own child “in case of emergency”. These kits are ink-free, which they will provide for all eligible kindergarten to sixth-grade students. The state says that this is in case of missing or trafficked children. Parents, however, have taken a different message from it. In light of recent school shootings, such as that of the Uvalde shooting in May, many parents see this as the state dodging the true problem: Guns and gun laws. (1)
One person, named Mamma Sissie Says on Twitter, tweeted the following: “Texas school districts sent a notice to parents that districts will be providing DNA kits so that children can be identified in case of emergency. GOP won’t pass legislation to protect your kids from guns, but they’ll make it easier to ID their bodies. This is America.” (2)
Identifying The Unidentifiable
After the Robb Elementary shooting, it took quite a while for authorities to identify some of the children’s bodies. This was because many of their injuries were so horrific, it was very difficult to identify who they were. Some families had DNA swabs that they were able to provide to the authorities in order to identify their children. Though the state says that identifying their childrens’ bodies in the case of yet another school shooting is not the intention of the kits, hold a stark reminder for the parents that they can’t send their children off to school without worry.
“You have to understand, I’m a former law enforcement officer,” said former CIA and FBI agent Tracy Walder, who has lived in Texas for 14 years. “I worry every single day when I send my kid to school. Now we’re giving parents DNA kits so that when their child is killed with the same weapon of war I had when I was in Afghanistan, parents can use them to identify them?”
Read: Mother Turned Her Son into Police after Discovering that He Was Planning To Attack School
Sending The Wrong Message
Parents are saying whatever the intent of the kits is or was, regardless it is sending them some pretty devastating messages. The first of these is that the government is not going to do anything to solve this problem. Clearly, as well, these kits are not solving anything. The legislation for these kits actually was passed in 2021, long before the Robb Elementary massacre happened. The timing of the roll-out, however, couldn’t be worse.
The other issue parents face with these kits is that they now will have to have conversations with their children that their kids aren’t necessarily ready to have. Kids are naturally curious and will ask about what they are doing and why. Very few parents are ready to talk to their children about the potential of something so bad happening to them at school that they die in a horrific way that makes them unidentifiable by sight.
Most parents, as well as much of the public, have taken this as a sign that the state has simply given up trying to keep their children safe. Twitter user BCross052422 tweeted: “Yeah! Awesome! Let’s identify kids after they’ve been murdered instead of fixing issues that could ultimately prevent them from being murdered. It’s like wiping your a** before you take a s***.” (3)
A spokesperson for the Texas Education Agency said this in a statement:
“Senate Bill 2158 established the Child Identification Program, a grant to supply child I.D. fingerprint and DNA identification kits to school systems to provide to families in their respective school communities… parents can voluntarily request these kits.
To fulfill this statutory obligation, TEA is collaborating with the Safety Blitz Foundation, National Child Identification (I.D.) Program, Education Service Centers, and school systems to provide families who had children in kindergarten through sixth grade during the 2021-2022 school year and kindergarten during the 2022-2023 school year with child I.D. fingerprint kits,”
Needless to say, parents are feeling frustrated and fearful. School is supposed to be a place where they send their children to learn, where they will be safe and protected. Instead, for many Texan parents as well as parents around the country, sending their children to school is “a daily terror”. Hopefully both state and country will see this message that the parents are trying to send and do something that will actually bring about change.
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