INDUSTRY CONNECTIONS
Ralph Knight, left, has 44 years of experience in student transportation.
For his efforts, the California State Assembly named Knight a “Clean Air Hero” in 2001. Tat same year he also received a Clean Air Award from the American Lung Associa- tion and an appreciation award from John Deere for contributions made to natural gas technology. Knight has received multiple U.S.
congressional certificates of appre- ciation, a “Green Fleet Award” from School Transportation News at the 2008 STN EXPO and the Magic School Bus Award in 2010 from the Alternative Fuel Vehicle Institute. Meanwhile, Koskelowski joined
ALTERNATIVE FUEL PIONEER TO LEAD 21ST ANNUAL STN EXPO
R
alph Knight, the director of trans- portation at Napa Valley Unified School District north of San Fran- cisco for nearly the past 20 years,
will serve as co-chair of the 21st Annual STN EXPO this summer in Reno, Nev. Joining Knight as a co-chair will be NAS-
DPTS representative David Koskelowski, the state director of student transportation with the Wyoming Department of Education. Murrell Martin, the state director from the Utah State Office of Education, was scheduled to be the NASDPTS rep as the association’s Western Region director, but he nominated Koskelowski to take his place after recently replacing Ben Shew of West Virginia as the steering commit- tee chair for the National Congress on School Transportation, scheduled for May 2015. Knight and Koskelowski will assist STN Editor in Chief Ryan Gray in directing confer- ence curriculum across the educational tracks of Business Management, Head Start, Mainte- nance, Safety & Security, and Special Needs. Knight celebrated 44 years in the student
transportation industry on Nov. 21, 2013, the date he began driving a school bus for Napa Valley Unified. He drove a route for four years
24 School Transportation News January 2014
before moving on to train drivers for Justin-Si- ena High School, a Catholic-run college prep in Napa. Knight said students were bused in from Sonoma and Fairfield on one of the district’s eight buses, which Knight grew from four when he started. He remained at Justin-Siena for 17 years be-
fore joining an airport charter company owned by Don Evans, who was Knight’s transporta- tion director at Napa, and who later became the district’s director of school planning and construction. Four years later, in March 1986, Knight
accepted the director of transportation position at nearby Petaluma City Schools. Ten, in Sep- tember 1994, Napa Valley Director of Transpor- tation Fred Sowash, the founder of California’s school bus driver academy, retired. Evans, who by that time had returned to the school district, recommended Knight for the job. Since, Knight has been renowned nationwide
for his use of alternative-fuel school buses. In fact, he is one of, if not the earliest, adopter of electric and hybrid school buses in the nation. Napa Valley does not operate one diesel or gasoline bus. It has electrics, hybrids, CNG and propane buses among its fleet.
the Wyoming DOE in 2008 as a project analyst before succeeding the retired D. Leeds Pickering a year later as the program manager of traffic safety and pupil transportation. He also served in the U.S. Air Force for 21 years, retiring in 2005 as a first sergent following stints as an an- ti-terrorism/force protection program manager, security forces evaluator/ mobile fire team leader, chief of information, personnel and industrial security, and a vehicle control NCO. Koskelowski was stationed domes-
tically as well as abroad in England, Panama and Korea.
David Koskelowski joins Knight as this year's STN EXPO co-chair.
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