Texas Schools Send Parents DNA Kits to Identify Kids' Bodies in Case of Emergencies, Parents More Anxious

Public schools in Texas are sending students home carrying DNA kits to help parents identify their kids in case of emergencies. However, instead of making parents feel at ease, the kits make them even more anxious about sending their children to school.

The Texas state legislature passed Senate Bill No. 2158 in 2021, a law that required the Texas Education Agency to furnish identification kits to school districts and open-enrollment charter schools, which should be distributed to students' parents or legal custodians.

The law passed after the horrifying Santa Fe High School shooting, which ended the lives of eight students and two teachers, and a year before the Uvalde mass shooting, which ended the lives of 19 fourth-graders and two teachers inside Robb Elementary School.

Right now, the Texas public school system will be providing "ink-free fingerprint and DNA identification cards'' to all eligible K-6 students. Utilization of the kits is said to be not mandatory and will be based on the parent's decision.

Sending the wrong message to Texas families

The kit consists of a three-fold pamphlet that allows parents to store the DNA and fingerprints of their children at home. In case of an emergency, this will be turned over to law enforcement agencies. According to the legislation, the fingerprint and DNA verification kits are intended to "help locate and return a missing or trafficked child."

After the Uvalde shooting, the second deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, Texan parents are alarmed about the kits and the horrifying message some say they send to the students' families.

A former CIA and FBI agent and now a college professor who taught high school history for 16 years, Tracy Walder, expressed how "devastated" she was when she found out that her second-grade daughter would be carrying a kit home. She said that she had tried to "find the right words" for her feelings, yet she cannot "because sometimes it's beyond comprehension."

"This sends two messages: The first is that the government is not going to do anything to solve the problem. This is their way of telling us that. The second is that us parents are now forced to have conversations with our kids that they may not be emotionally ready for. My daughter is 7. What do I tell her?" Walder stated anxiously.

Authority chooses gun over kids

Walder is not alone in her apprehensive reactions. Many parents have expressed discomfort in sending their kids' DNA to school for privacy reasons.

Wendi Aarons, a mother of two, ages 18 and 20, who attended public schools in Texas from kindergarten until they graduated high school, said that she is quite relieved that she will not receive any kits at home, but she deeply empathizes with those parents who are. She said she could not imagine the anxiety and panic parents face sending their kids to school every day, not knowing if they will see them again at home.

In an interview with Today, she said the kit makes her physically sick. She finds it hard to "even grapple" if what is happening is real. Parents should worry about parent-teacher organization, sign-up sheets, and their children's grades instead of their kids' murder and how to identify their bodies if they have been shot many times.

She further said that these kits convey that guns are more important than kids. Texas has done "absolutely nothing" to protect students and teachers, and now they have chosen "the callous, heartless, cruel measure to send DNA test kits" so parents can identify their children's bodies if they become victims of a massacre.

Emily Westbrooks, who moved with her family to Texas from Ireland believing that gun violence is trivial in the former and sending children to school was not a "daily terror," expressed that the kits exposed that lie as they are an "incredibly triggering, in-your-face reminder" that their children are at risk of being gunned down to the point of being unrecognizable.

She added her disappointment in elected officials in both the national realm and in Texas, who she said have obviously given up as they have decided that the children are not worth restricting guns and instead are offering parents a "disgusting" consolation.

Brett Cross, whose 10-year-old son Uziyah Garcia was killed in the Uvalde mass shooting, took to Twitter and expressed his frustration over the kits, sarcastically saying that it's awesome that kids can now be identified when they get to be murdered instead of "fixing issues" that can protect them from being killed.