HOME

GETTING STUDENTS
TO SCHOOL SAFELY

 

LATINO: Congratulations on your recent appointment as the Chief Financial Officer of National Express, LLC.  We are interested to learn about your company and what it does for our nation’s schools.

CASTRO: Thank you.  National Express is proud to be one of North America’s largest providers of both K-12 student transportation and municipal transit services.  In the US, we operate under the trade names of Durham School Services, Petermann, and Matthews Bus while in Canada we operate under the name of Stock Transportation.  Our philosophy is to offer the highest level of transportation safety and quality by providing outstanding customer service that reflects strong and positive employee relations.  Overall, our company operates some 23,500 school buses in over 550 school districts in 33 U.S. states and 3 Canadian provinces.  Every day, we transport more than 1 million children to and from school.  Similarly, our transit business transports more than 20 million passengers annually with more than 1,800 vehicles.

 

LATINO: How do schools benefit from what you do?

CASTRO:  Overall, we enable schools to better focus their time and financial resources on their mission critical responsibilities inside the classroom.  With more than 100 years of experience, we are able to provide schools with a variety of benefits, including a highly trained workforce, top level customer service, large-scale purchasing and operational efficiencies, industry-leading technology solutions, and regimen of eco-friendly business practices.  By overseeing such things as transportation routing, bus maintenance, and driver recruitment and training, we are able to offer unparalleled service to every school we serve that enables them to spend more time and money in the classroom educating our nation’s children.

 

LATINO: How has National Express engaged with the Latino community in the past?

CASTRO: A diverse company like ours has a diverse work force and customer base.  We have actively supported the work of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO) for a number of years.  NALEO’s strong focus on education policy and programming is something we greatly value as we have a similar commitment to education that is a central part of our mission and purpose.  On policy issues, we have consistently supported immigration reform as a company, starting with our support years ago for the work of the “Gang of 8” in the United States Senate in crafting a comprehensive approach to immigration reform.  Our support of both NALEO and immigration reform is supplemented at the local level by charitable donations in the communities where we do business.  Ours is a people business and we make it a priority to support worthy causes in the communities we call home.

LATINO Magazine recently interviewed Alejandro Castro, Chief Financial Officer of National Express, LLC, North America’s second largest student transportation company, about the student transportation industry, how it helps schools and students, engages with the Latino community, and what the future holds for companies which transport the nation’s children to and from school each day.