Despite moving his family to Virginia, Santorum didn't enroll his children in a local public school. Nor did the Santorums simply home-school the kids. Instead, in 2001, they enrolled five of their kids in the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, based out of tiny Beaver County, Pennsylvania. The school was founded by Nick Trombetta, a former wrestling coach who set up an online charter school in a depopulated part of the state and turned it into a financial powerhouse that rakes in millions annually in public education funds. (In 2007, Trombetta, a major Republican donor in the state, was the subject of a state grand jury investigation into his use of millions in public funds to build a performing arts center near the school's headquarters, among other things. No charges have been brought.)
Considered a public school, the online charter's students are required to take state-mandated assessments and meet other formal requirements not demanded of traditional home-schoolers. But it offers home-schoolers lots of advantages, notably free computers and internet connections. When Santorum enrolled his kids there, the local school district in Penn Hills was forced to pick up the tab for the cyber school, which cost the district $38,000 a year for the Santorum children.
After four years, the press got wind of this in 2004, and Democrats raised a fuss about the fact that their senator didn't actually live in Pennsylvania, much less the Penn Hills school district that was footing the bills for his children's education in Virginia. The local school board, which included a member who was the local Democratic Party committee chair, attempted to force Santorum to repay the district $100,000 in tuition.
When the scandal broke, Trombetta, the founder of the charter school, offered to let Santorum's kids stay enrolled for free if Santorum would pay the technology costs. In the end, with Democrats challenging his residency in the state, Santorum withdrew his kids from the school. He never repaid a dime. The state ended up settling with the school district and repaying $55,000 in tuition fees. (The Santorum campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)
Even today, nearly eight years after the charter school scandal, Santorum's residency issues continue to dog him. On the campaign trail, distancing himself from the dreaded Washington insider label, he has highlighted his Pennsylvania roots. In August, at a campaign event in Iowa, he handed out samples of "Pennsylvania Presidential Peach Preserves," which he claimed were made by his family from peaches they picked off their trees back home. But as the Roxborough-Manayunk, Pennsylvania, Patch pointed out on Tuesday, there's not a peach tree to be found anywhere near the Santorum home in Penn Hills. The web site speculated that the peaches must have come from elsewhere—Santorum's $1.26 million manse in Great Falls, Virginia, perhaps.
