Parents are reacting to the news that, due to the passing of state legislature in Texas, schools in the state are sending voluntary DNA identification kits to parents to help identify their children in case of an emergency. This is especially alarming to parents following the Uvalde tragedy where 19 fourth-graders and 2 teachers were killed during a school shooting.
Texas state legislature passed Senate Bill No. 2158 in 2021.
According to Today , this bill requires the Texas Education Agency to “provide identification kits to school districts and open-enrollment charter schools for distribution to the parent or legal custodian of certain students.”
The contents and very existence of this kit have been controversial.
The kit contains “ink-free fingerprint and DNA identification cards” which were originally intended to “help locate and return a missing or trafficked child.”
One parent, Tracy Walder, who formerly worked as as VIA and FBI agent, spoke about how she felt learning about the kit.
Walder said she was “devastated.”
“You have to understand, I’m a former law enforcement officer,” she went on. “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?”
Walder said it was hard to “find the right words.”
“Sometimes it’s beyond comprehension.”
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“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,” Walder continued.
Walder went on.
“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?”
“It makes me physically sick,” Wendi Aarons, a mother of two stated.
“I have a hard time even grappling with this as a real thing that is happening. Parents of school kids should be worrying about (parent-teacher organization) sign-up sheets and grades and if their kid likes whatever they’re serving in the cafeteria that day, not their child’s murder and if they’re shot so many times their body cannot be identified,” she went on .
“Elected officials, both national and Texan, have given up,” said mother Emily Westbrooks.
“They’ve decided our kids aren’t worth restricting guns, but they’re offering us this as some kind of consolation. It’s disgusting that they can’t do any better than to admit that they won’t protect our children.”
People have been speaking out on Twitter.
“Yeah! Awesome! Let’s identify kids after they’ve been murdered instead of fixing issues that could ultimately prevent them from being murdered,” shared one user.
What do you make of this controversial practice? Let us know in the comments.
h/t: Today