State Agrees to Reimburse Penn Hills for Santorum School Scam

Remember the controversy about Rick Santorum billing the Penn Hills taxpayers for his children's charter school dtuition even though they live in Leesburg, Virginia? The state agreed today to reimburse the Penn Hills School District $55,000. The good news here is the Penn Hills taxpayers are off thehook for some of this scam and the bad news is the state taxpayers picked it up. The Senator and his family have steadfastly refused to reimburse the school district. The Santorums live full time in Leesburg these days but they scammed the Penn Hills people for the cost of schooling their children in Virginia.

The district had sought about $73,000 that it said the state wrongly sent to the cyberschool over four school years, from 2001-02 to 2004-05, Muscante said.

The Penn Hills school board maintained that since Santorum lived primarily in Leesburg, Va., the Pennsylvania district should not have to pay for an out-of-state resident's children to go to a cyberschool.

The cyberschool had enrolled five of Santorum's six children. Santorum, R-Pa., withdrew his children from the Midland-based cyberschool in November 2004 after Penn Hills officials raised questions about the arrangement.