Dispute? No problem. We pay.
by Steve?M
Rick Santorum (R-Va.) cyberschooling: You're soaking in it
There's been a new twist in the unending saga of how Rick Santorum used other people's money to pay for the cyberschooling of five of his kids inside their suburban Virginia McMansion.
Are you -- like us -- a state of Pennsylvania taxpayer? Then guess what -- you've been stuck with the bill now.
PENN HILLS, Pa. - A western Pennsylvania school board voted to accept $55,000 from the state to settle a dispute over whether it should have paid tuition for the children of U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa. to attend a cyber charter school.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education has said the money was not a reimbursement, but an acknowledgment that the department gave conflicting rules about when a district can challenge the state's decision to withhold cyber school tuition fees from the district.
The district near Pittsburgh wanted the state to pay it $73,000 that school district officials said the state wrongly sent to the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School to educate Santorum's children from 2001-02 to 2004-05. But the school board voted Tuesday to accept the lesser amount offered by the state earlier this month.
"I don't feel that we should have to pay for anybody's cyber school education and I don't feel we should pay for anybody's education that don't live in Penn Hills," school board member Erin Vecchio told KDKA-TV on Tuesday.
We can't decide whether this decision by appointees of Fox News Democrat Gov. Ed Rendell is a) a sign that Rendell really is secretly helping Santorum after all or b) a sign that Rendell is sticking the fork in Santorum, by rekindling voter anger and making it a "statewide" issue, or c) non-political (yeah, right).
In the meantime, if you're mad that your tax dollars are paying for a politician with an affluent lifestyle to school his kids in a different state, you might want to consider holding that thought for the next, oh, 55 days or so.
And yes, we've seen that TV commericial where Santorum shamelessly uses his kids to try to take the heat off himself. Even the obsessively non-partisan factcheck.org thinks the ad is bogus.