Schools in Texas have started sending students home with DNA kits to allow parents to identify their children’s bodies “in case of an emergency,” NBC News reports. This depressing yet necessary development shows just how common school shootings have become in the state and across the U.S. as a country.
- The DNA kits are required by law. Senate Bill No. 2158, which required the state’s Education Agency to “provide identification kids to school districts and open-enrollment charter schools for distribution to the parent or legal custodian of certain students,” was passed back in 2021. It came as a response to a shooting in Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, in which eight students and two teachers were killed. Nearly a year later, 19 fourth-graders and two teachers were murdered at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.
- Parents don’t have to use the kits. The DNA kits are not mandatory, but the Texas public school system will provide ink-free fingerprint ID cards to all students in kindergarten through sixth grade as part of the initiative. The DNA and fingerprints can be stored at home and turned over to authorities should an “emergency” arise.
- Many parents aren’t pleased about the kits. Despite the very clear danger in modern classrooms, many parents in the state don’t like the DNA kits. This is largely because they send the message that the state believes school shootings are unavoidable and something that should just be dealt with. Former CIA and FBI agent Tracy Walder told NBC News that she was “devastated” by her second-grader being sent home with a kit. “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?”
- Texas needs to do something about its violence problem. Walder doesn’t believe the state and the schools are doing enough to combat the very serious violence problem. “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,” she said. “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?”
