PENN HILLS, Pa. -- U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum says he's taking his children out of a online education program for which the Penn Hills School District had been paying.

Santorum has a modest home in Penn Hills, but neighbors say he hardly spends any time there and really lives outside Washington D.C. in Leesburg, Va., where his family owns a much more expensive house.

Still, under the law, Penn Hills had to pay for Santorum's kids to attend the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School because he is a local property owner.

The school district has spent about $100,000 in taxpayer money on tuition for the Santorum children. Now, officials say they will only pay for children who reside full-time in Penn Hills to attend public cyber schools.

Santorum says his children will withdraw from the online program and be home-schooled, as they were in the past.

"With the approval of the Penn Hills School District, for four years my children attended the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, while we split time between Pennsylvania and Washington (D.C.) ... We will now resume the practice of home-schooling our children so that we can travel across Pennsylvania and continue to fulfill my pledge -- that I have met every year -- to visit each of Pennsylvania's 67 counties," Santorum said in a statement.

In 1990, Santorum unseated Rep. Doug Walgren, attacking on the issue of whether Walgren actually lived in his home district.

"I've talked to his neighbors. His parents live there. He does not live there," Santorum said in a November 1990 debate.

Penn Hills school board member Erin Vecchio, an outspoken critic of the Santorums' cyber-schooling, wants the senator to repay the district.

"He owes taxpayers of Penn Hills 100-plus thousand," she told Channel 4 Action News reporter Bob Mayo. "He should pay them interest and penalty because he knew he wasn't a resident. He should have never filed for that cyber school, and it was totally illegal the way he did it."

Vecchio, head of the local Democratic committee, said she has no political agenda against Santorum, a Republican, but is concerned about Penn Hills because her three children attend school in the district.

Despite repeated efforts through the day to speak with Santorum, his staff canceled a Thursday afternoon interview with Channel 4 Action News.

The Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School says it "stands behind (the) Santorum children" and is offering to continue educating them if the Santorums pay for the technology and associated costs.