Sen. Tom Pischke breaks with Senators, votes to keep sex offenders in classrooms

A bill was in front of legislators today to help school boards protect kids from their fellow students that might do them harm, but one Senator was definitely out to lunch and out of his mind this morning.

Senate Bill 168 was up in Senate Education this morning to allow school boards to deal with the sticky issue of what to do with students who are sex offenders:

A board of a school district may adopt a policy that requires a student who is registered as a sex offender, pursuant to § 22-24B-2, to receive instruction through remote or distance learning or an alternative educational program.

Read that here.

Apparently, there is a case that a School District is dealing with, and this measure was brought to create permissive language to give the school district options to meet their obligations under FAPE to make it clear they will allow an student who is a sex offender to be served and educated remotely.  Away from classmates, away from potential victims.

Good solution, right? Apparently there are those who disagree.

It was about then my phone started blowing up, as State Senator Tom Pischke, the same person who was the lone voice protecting Senator Julie Frye Mueller’s right to harass an employee about breastfeeding was a hard NO vote on kicking sex offenders out of the classroom.

I haven’t had a chance to listen for myself, but I’m told that in his dissent of protecting kids from rapists in their midst, apparently he was muttering something about the “rights” of the sex offender.

Fighting schools on protecting their students from sex offenders… Hm..

Is that what passes as statesmanship in the Senate nowadays?

39 thoughts on “Sen. Tom Pischke breaks with Senators, votes to keep sex offenders in classrooms”

  1. Pischke is loco. He does not deserve to represent anybody, in anything, especially making laws that are supposed to protect, serve, and take care of the people of South Dakota. Can we get anyone else to serve that district?!

    1. yes there were three other candidates: Crisp, Heinemann and Rave ran against Pischke in the primary and he won anyway. He’s an embarrassment to District 25 and always has been. Wins elections by courting the votes of deadbeat dads. Apparently District 25 is full of deadbeat dads.

      1. The District numbered 25 has a disproportionate population of deadbeat dads. This is how Mr. Pischke, who I have been told looks a bit like Mr. Bluto from Popeye, keeps getting elected. These deadbeat dads flock to the same bars.

      2. Its the Dell Rapids private school community that drives this crap and these reps. They protect actual predators like Koscan and Klaudt, and call people different from them the predators. Imagine living your life constantly worrying about how others are living theirs. I don’t understand this desire to take away choices and freedoms of people because you think you are so unique to think something differently than them, and we need to pay government to make them live like you. No amount of punitive outcome will make everyone think and live like you, it is biologically inherit to our species. We can come up with any crazy thought, but that doesn’t mean you are special and your new crazy thought should be enforced on the rest of us.

  2. What an embarrassment, who in their right mind believes convicted rapists should be in a classroom? So now Pischke believes in equal rights for rapists instead of protecting our kids? This is about the Newell High School situation. The guy was convicted of forceable rape of another student and now he is in the classroom.

  3. Advocate for deadbeat dads un the legislature and now this. The SDGQP sure has cratered. We need new political parties representing us in Pierre. Time to take the clown car to the salvage yard.

    1. fortunately he hasn’t felt much allegiance to the sdgop as it is, so new-party talk is very premature.

      1. he’s a total rino, doesn’t support the republican ticket at all and has been working hard to destroy the GOP

        1. The “republican ticket” shouldn’t be the support of any representative, they should be representing their constituents. If you consider who Tom is representing, he may be doing just that……

          1. As the precinct committee man for Minnehaha VP11,
            Piscke’s JOB was to support the entire Republican ticket.
            If he wasn’t going to do his JOB, he shouldn’t have signed up for it.

            Explaining this to people who eat the crayons supplied with paper placemats is getting tiring.

        2. “The previous two ghost writers don’t have a foothold on reality concerning either Pischke or Aylward. Pischke is one of those guys who lightens up tense moments and is an expert on matters most know nothing about. Aylward is a constitutionally driven deep thinker with a rigid moral code and unflappable.

          “Calling either of them RINOs is gut wrenching humor and incredibly out of touch.”

          –Representative Charlie Hoffman

          https://dakotawarcollege.com/pischke-attacks-schoenbeck-pischke-rumored-to-be-seeking-majority-leader/#comment-932982

  4. Wiki needs to show the spine that Lederman didn’t and cut off financial support for Pischke and any candidate funneling him money.

    1. The job of the party Chairman is getting Republicans elected, not supervising them after they are elected.
      If Pischke continues to win primaries, the party organization is obligated to help him win elections. It’s up to the voters to replace him.

  5. So a lawyer testified that the bill violates federal law and will result in a lawsuit? Who cares? By the time that lawsuit is settled, the rapist will have graduated. In the meantime, he’ll be out of the classroom.

    1. That is a garbage argument and Pischke should know better. SB 168 simply gives school boards the authority to adopt policy to keep sex offenders out of the classroom. There is nothing unconstitutional about it. Maryland passed a straight ban in 2021 and it hasn’t been overturned.

      1. Pischke should also know that “local control” of education is a constant plank in the SDGOP platform. Letting the locally elected school boards decide these issues is the Republican way.

      2. Lawyer, it’ll become unconstitutional as soon as “sex offenders” are declared a protected class under the Civil Rights Act.

        Wait for it…

        1. Seriously, you oppose it because sex offenders could be declared a protected class? Do you really believe convicted sex offenders belongs in the classroom? This wasn’t a consensual statutory rape case, it was a brutal assault rape. Rather than fighting for rapists, we should be fighting for our kids.

  6. Pischke is one of the few solid conservatives and real Repubicans in the legislature. How about the sponsors bring a bill that won’t get the state sued.

    1. Anonymous at 5:39, Pischke was one of the convention delegates who publicly declared he would not support the Republican ticket. Real Republicans don’t do that.

      He’s not a Republican at all, he’s a member of the Deadbeat Dad Party. Solid Conservatives don’t think the taxpayers should be supporting their children; people with brains know that’s who supports children when their fathers don’t pay child support.

      1. Tom refused to back the Republican ticket that sponsors this blog, where Tom’s supporters have their comments deleted.

        “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”

        1. Anonymous at 4:08, Tom is a precinct committeeman from Minnehaha County. His job was to support the Republican ticket.

    2. I don’t know why nobody ever points out to Pischke, who complains he doesn’t get enough time with his kids and doesn’t make enough money to support them, that if he took all the time and money he spends campaigning and serving, and got a Real Job, one that has him at home every night and on weekends, he would solve his own problems.

        1. Don’t know;, but when seen campaigning or crackerbarreling on Saturdays, somebody should ask “where are your kids?”

  7. Another reason why Libertarians running as Republicans is toxic to our political process. They are free loaders that do not want to work and raise money to build their own party so they are like fleas on the GOP.

    Their ideas don’t sell and have been attempting to rebrand themselves as Constitutional Conservatives or Constitutional Republicans and most don’t even know the Constitution and violate party unit or other constitutions frequently.

    1. “If you analyze it, I believe the very heart-and-soul of conservatism is libertarianism… The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom… There is a legitimate need in an orderly society for some government to maintain freedom… But again, I stand on my statement that I think that libertarianism and conservatism are traveling the same path.”

      –Ronald Reagan

      Regardless of party affiliation, every true constitutional conservative is a libertarian, and it’s too bad some people try to use the word as an epithet.

      1. Reagan had his own issues and his action led to the mess the Republican Party is today by brining in the religious nut jobs into the party Barry Goldwater warned us about.

        1. So it turns out that, deep down, even Methodists like liberty. Not sure how that’s supposed to be Reagan’s fault.

      2. putting sex offenders in a classroom starts out as libertarianism…until the Real Fathers resort to vigilantism

      3. the true conservatives of his era who made the rubber meet the road were milton friedman- who elevated free market economics to its preeminent position in bringing forth real conservative values in business, and newt gingrich- who sealed a legacy for reaganites by getting most of the contract with america passed. reagan himself was a well mannered fellow with some loopy notions. if ‘real republicans’ actually studied his life, he’d be branded a RINO and if he was suddenly resurrected and with us, he’d hate them calling everyone RINOs and splitting the party.

        1. Credit Newt Gingrich for recognizing that it would serve his own political self-interest to jump onto Reagan’s coattails, but Gingrich contributed almost nothing to making the rubber meet the road or sealing the Reaganite legacy. The Republican majority that America’s voters gave to Gingrich in the 1990s was part of the Reaganite legacy that already existed. Politically speaking, Reagan was a well-mannered cold-blooded assassin.

          What was Reagan doing when Newt Gingrich was 21 years old?

          1. gingrich was the most effective gop speaker of the house, possibly ever. from that he remains one of the preeminent thinkers of actual conservatism. he crafted amazing political solutions by following friedman – i.e. melding the free market approach with political realities to create hybrid solutions that worked. he was so good at this that his own party leadership joined democrats in getting rid of him before he upset the swamp’s corrupt cash flow. after he left the gop super majority slid into decay and was an easy target for pelosi to crush in 2006. compared to the days of gingrich’s laser focus, the lack of gop vision in washington today is appalling, and trumpism keeps everything as stupid as it can be. history on this is pretty clear.

            1. We seem to agree that Newt Gingrich’s concept of “actual conservatism” is different from Reagan’s. We seem to disagree on which concept is correct.

              Happy President’s Day.

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