Reply #22: I like to think of it as the Rick Santorum situation [View All]

[LynneSin]

One of the things that put the nail into the coffin of Rick Santorum's senate career was the fact that the school district were Rick owns a crappy 2-bedroom house was stuck with the bill of educating Santorum's kids and those kids were living full time in Virginia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Santorum#Pennsylvania_residency_and_tuition_fee

At the time the issue arose, Santorum's five older children attended the Western Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School,<63> with 80 percent of tuition costs paid by the Penn Hills School District.<64> At a meeting in November 2004, the Penn Hills School District announced that it did not believe Santorum met the qualifications for residency status, because he and his family spent most of the year in Virginia. They demanded repayment of tuition costs totaling $67,000.

When news reports showed Sen. Santorum was renting his Penn Hills home, Santorum withdrew his five children from the cyber education program that Penn Hills School District paid for. That saved Penn Hills taxpayers about $38,000 a year.<65> Although Santorum said he would make other arrangements for his children's education, he insisted that he did not owe the school board any back tuition. Once the controversy surfaced, the children were withdrawn from the cyber school and were then home schooled.

Christie is a multi-millionaire (whereas the Santorums never were) so if Christie is paying for his kids educations from his money then it's not any of our business. But if the state is paying for their education, then the taxpayers have the right to know ESPECIALLY if some underfunded public school system is forced to pay for the kids to go to some expensive private school.

BTW I'm sure the right-wing would bring up the education of Chelsea Clinton and the Obama Girls, all 3 attended (or are attending) Sidwell's Friends School in DC. Now I'm not sure of Chelsea but I do believe that the Obama's pay for their daughter's school tuition. But the Clintons and Obamas both used Sidwell because it was better equiped to protect the children from intruders or other attackers (since a kidnapped child of a president would be a serious national crisis).