Questions About Grammy D's, D-15's Taxi Service

Readers posed a couple of questions I wanted to address. One had to do with a new weekly feature at Patch.

Each week we are running Patch Picks, a column meant to highlight some of the best places to go or things to do in Palatine. One of the first focused on breakfast places. Shortly after it appeared I received the following e-mail:

You forgot t[o] add Grammy D's as part of your article. Can't imagine that you didn't include this restaurant that serves breakfast and lunch at VERY reasonable prices. Have you ever eaten there?

I have eaten at Grammy D's and it has been a breakfast fixture in Palatine for many years. Patch Picks is not meant to be a comprehensive list. That being said, Grammy D's should have been on the list. It was an oversight that it wasn't.

I also noticed a question posted by a reader in the comments section of one of Jennifer Mondy's Education Matters :

The [District 15] Board awarded contracts for: Three years of taxi services for student transportation to American Taxi, Mt. Prospect, IL, for an estimated total bid amount of $221,940, plus an increase equal to CPI in the last two years of the contract, as recommended. Who gets taxi service and why?

This is a very good question. The taxi contract was discussed by the District 15 school board at their Feb. 9 meeting.

The answer is that there are students who, for a variety of reasons, end up needing this service. For example, if a family is displaced by a fire and is temporarily living in another community the student can choose to still attend District 15.

Sometimes a family becomes homeless and is living at a shelter. Domestic discord can be another reason a student becomes displaced. These are students who were residents of District 15 and were attending school and their lives were uprooted for some reason.

Legally, the district has to allow the students to continue attending school here if they so choose. Likewise, there are kids temporarily living in Palatine who continue to attend school elsewhere. The cost of transporting the students is shared between the district the student is attending and the district in which the student currently is living.