Texas schools are encouraging parents to submit their kids’ DNA and fingerprints in the event their child goes missing or needs to be identified by law enforcement.

School districts in the Lone Star state began sending students home with free DNA and fingerprint kits this week as part of a 2021 law that created a “child identification program.”

The law was passed after a gunman killed eight students and two teachers at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, in 2018, but before the mass shooting in Uvalde in which 19 fourth-graders and two teachers were slaughtered.

The inkless, in-home fingerprint and DNA identification kits, which are not mandatory, are to be sent out to kids in kindergarten, elementary and middle school.

Parents can then submit the records to “federal, state, tribal, or local law enforcement to help locate and return a missing or trafficked child,” the law says.

Roughly 3.8 million students will get a kit this month, according to a local ABC affiliate.

The kits, which had the message “A gift of safety, from our family to yours” written on the outside, came with a three-fold pamphlet with an information program according to reports.

“In case of an emergency, this card may be provided to law enforcement agencies to help reunite you with your missing family member,” it reads.

While the program is not linked to school shootings, the kits are being sent out on the heels of the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, in which many victims were not easily identifiable, leaving many parents feeling apprehensive.

Tracy Walder, a retired federal law enforcement officer, told NBC News she was “devastated” that her second-grade daughter would be sent home with a kit.

“I worry every single day when I send my kid to school,” she said. “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?”