The Penn Hills School District, which is paying about $38,000 a year for five of U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum's children to attend a cyber charter school, is looking into whether the Republican senator resides in the district.

School board member Erin Vecchio, who is chair of the Democratic party in Penn Hills and lives near a two-bedroom house owned by the Santorums, said, "I live right down the street from the man. He's never there. ... He doesn't live here."

	Lake Fong, Post-Gazette
	This house at 111 Stephens Lane in Penn Hills is owned by U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum.

She thinks the district shouldn't have to pay for the Santorum children to attend the Western Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School. It is based in Midland but serves more than 3,100 pupils from nearly 400 school districts statewide who attend via computer.

Under state law, the district in which the pupil resides must pay for each resident who attends a charter school. While the fee varies by district, Penn Hills must pay $7,551 for each pupil.

Neither parents nor a school district outside the state can pay charter school tuition in Pennsylvania.

Penn Hills Superintendent Patricia Gennari said the school board had asked the administration to investigate Santorum's residency.

Santorum's communications director, Robert Traynham, issued a statement Friday pledging cooperation, but it did not clarify his residency status.

"Sen. Santorum looks forward to working with the Penn Hills School District and the municipality of Penn Hills to make sure that he is in compliance with all residency requirements," Traynham's statement said.

Santorum's press secretary, Christine Shott, who issued the statement, declined to elaborate on it.

The case mixes politics, money, education and technology.

With cyber schools, pupils can attend by logging on to their school-provided computers no matter where they are. There are 11 cyber charter schools statewide.

When the Santorums bought a two-bedroom house on Stephens Lane in Penn Hills in 1997, they already owned a house in Virginia, and cyber schools didn't exist.

The Santorums, who have six children, home-schooled their children and did not send their children to the regular Penn Hills public schools.

But they and some other home-school families chose cyber charter schools, which offer flexibility both in place and in curriculum.

In Penn Hills, the number of pupils who are home-schooled has fallen from 87 in 2001-02 to 39 this year while the number of cyber charter school pupils has grown from 30 to 66.

It's not unusual for school districts to check out whether pupils really are residents, but some of the tried-and-true techniques, such as staking out a house to see whether the pupil leaves for school, won't work with a cyber school.

James Chavis, home and school visitor and coordinator of pupil services in Penn Hills, told the board last week that he did 136 residency checks last school year, resulting in 44 pupils being removed from the district because they weren't residents.

The Santorums use the Penn Hills address for voter registration as do two other people, Bart and Alyssa DeLuca, both 25, according to Allegheny County records.

When a reporter went to the house on Stephens Lane on Friday, a young man who came to the door declined to comment.

But what does it mean to be a resident?

Sean Fields, associate counsel for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, did not comment on this particular case, but he said there were "very few" court cases addressing the residency question.

State law says, "A child shall be considered a resident of the school district in which his parents or the guardian or his person resides."

Just having two homes doesn't in itself mean the person isn't a resident, Fields said. He noted a 2000 case in the Cumberland Valley School District in which the regular family home was outside of the school district but the mother and her two children spent five days a week at a townhouse in Cumberland Valley. The court ruled the mother and the children were residents of the school district, even though their primary home was elsewhere.

In the case, the court noted: "She and the children actually live there. They stay there during the days and sleep there at night. Mail and phone calls are received there. Clothing, books and supplies are kept there as well."

The court said that was the "classic definition of 'residence.' "

A U.S. senator must be an "inhabitant" of the state that elects him or her.

Brian McDonald, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of State, was not aware of any formal definition of that term.

When Santorum ran for Congress, he lived in Mt. Lebanon and criticized then U.S. Rep. Doug Walgren for buying a house and raising his three children in McLean, Va.

For two terms in the House, Santorum commuted back to Mt. Lebanon. But after he became a senator, he sold his house in Mt. Lebanon and bought a home in Herndon, Va., for $292,184, in 1995.

In 1997, he and his wife bought the Penn Hills house for $87,800, now with a market value of $106,000 but, with a homestead exclusion, taxed at $91,000.

In 2001, they sold the Herndon house for $429,900 and bought a house in Leesburg, Va., for $643,361, according to Fairfax and Loudoun County records. That house now is assessed at a market value of $757,000.

One other issue has arisen in the controversy.

Bob Hunter, Penn Hills director of code enforcement, said the Santorum house lacks a required occupancy permit, which calls for a municipal inspection for any code violations and a dye test of the sewer system. Hunter has sent a letter asking them to seek an occupancy permit.