U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum shouldn't expect the Penn Hills School District in suburban Pittsburgh to pay for his children's cyberschool education.

Although he is required to meet Pennsylvania residency requirements to represent this state in the Senate, even he would have to admit that his home in Leesburg, Va., assessed this year at $757,000, is his family's most important residence.

It surely isn't his modest Penn Hills home, which Santorum bought in 1997 for $87,800 and which, on the basis of a reassessment last year, currently has an assessed value of $106,000.

Obviously, the eight-member Santorum family doesn't spend most of its time crammed into the small Penn Hills home - a situation under which Santorum could justify the Penn Hills district's outlay. Unless he can prove that he and his family do in fact spend significantly more time in Pennsylvania than they do in Virginia, Santorum should hold himself to a higher standard and image by footing the cyberschool bill - even though he and his family have done nothing illegal by having Penn Hills pay up to now.

Since the 2001-02 school year, Penn Hills has spent $100,000 educating Santorum's children, and before his children's education is completed - assuming that they remain cyberschool students - that total likely will be multiplied a number of times.

It is money that should instead benefit children getting their education in Penn Hills classrooms - not children who are essentially out-of-state residents who have little, if any, loyalty to the school district.

Under Pennsylvania's 2002 cyberschool law - Virginia has no such cyberschool provision - the district in which a student lives must pay the cost of tuition for students enrolled in cyberschools. The Santorums' "official" residence makes the senator's children technically eligible for Penn Hills' financing of their education.

However, Penn Hills' Santorum outlay doesn't square with Santorum's portrayal of himself as a fiscal conservative who shuns unnecessary public spending. He opposes it for others, but, at least in this instance, not for something that directly benefits his own wallet.

He ought to rethink the attitude that the situation projects.

People in Penn Hills and elsewhere who endure all kinds of unconventional family circumstances as the result of employment responsibilities find it difficult to sympathize with the requirements that Santorum's Senate service entails. It's true that, as head of the Republican Conference, Santorum is required to travel often, but most families don't have the financial wherewithal to have their children oftentimes travel with them - as Santorum does.

The Santorum children's enrollment in the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School makes that children's travel possible. But the Penn Hills School District shouldn't have to bear the financial burden associated with that freedom to travel.

If Santorum doesn't want to pay his children's cyberschool tuition, he should enroll them in a Virginia public school, or pay to educate them at a Virginia private school that would offer some flexibility in regard to the family's travel requirements and choices.

The Santorum cyberschool tuition should have become a Penn Hills issue long before now.

- J.R.K.