And today on what feels like a dystopian TV show called How Badly Can Texas Continue To Miss The Point? we’re seeing schools in the The Lone Star State sending DNA kits to parents to help identify their kids’ bodies “in case of emergency”. Yes, really…
Texas has been pretty infamous with their controversial way of working and their school system is no exception. In 2021, Texas state legislature passed Senate Bill No. 2158 requiring public schools to “provide identification kits to school districts and open-enrollment charter schools for distribution to the parent or legal custodian of certain students”. The bill passed after the horrific murders of eight children and two teachers in Santa Fe, Texas as well as the botched response to the Uvalde shooting of Robb Elementary which ultimately claimed the lives of 19 kids and two adults.
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Because making a law to identify children’s dead bodies INSTEAD of making a law to protect them from dying is a perfectly sound scenario to these people… Absolutely abhorrent.
The Texas Education Agency have sent out fingerprinting pamphlets to students’ caregivers which will allow them to store their kiddo’s fingerprints at home in the event of an “emergency” — completely optional for the parent to use. The legislation mandate intended for the kits to be used to “help locate and return a missing or trafficked child”, but after the growing concern of school shootings it’s got parents even more concerned for their children’s safety.
Tracy Walder, who is a former CIA and FBI agent expressed to Today Parents on Tuesday she was “devastated” to hear her daughter would be receiving one of these kits. She said she worries “every single day” to send her kids to school in her home state of Texas and she’s appalled these DNA kits could be used to identify remains of children who were “killed with the same weapon of war” she used during her service in Afghanistan:
“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?”
Having a conversation with your young child about being shot in school is beyond comprehension. How many innocent kids are going to have to die before something is actually done? It’s horrific to think this is the world we’re living in…
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[Image via MEGA/WENN]