Gupta had earlier worked for ambassador Susan Rice.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Led by Indian American chief executive Ravi Gupta, RePublic Schools of Nashville, Tennessee, which will be opening one of Mississippi’s first two charter schools in Jackson, is seeking to open two more schools in autumn of 2016.
The first school, Reimagine Prep, will grow to serve grades 5-8 starting this fall. RePublic proposes a second 5-8th grade school. But it’s also proposing a K-8 school, which would be the first time the organization has run a school with lower elementary grades, reported WRAL.
“We really should be starting early if we want the maximum impact,” Gupta told the news outlet. He further elaborated if students weren’t behind grade level, other parts of the curriculum besides math and reading could be deeper and richer in middle school years. Currently, subjects like science get lesser treatment because of RePublic’s heavy focus on helping students catch up in math and reading.
“Everything we do is in the mission of getting our students into the colleges of their choice. One of the early goals that we set was that our students, regardless of background,” Gupta stated last year during an interview with the Hechinger Report.
He previously served as Special Assistant and Speechwriter to Susan Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. He also spent two years working on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign – joining then-Senator Obama’s exploratory committee and working through the primary and general elections, according to RePublic’s website and his very own LinkedIn profile. He also ran fundraising, voter registration, and voter turnout operations in more than a half dozen states during the primary election and served as assistant to Chief Strategist David Axelrod during the general election.
Gupta, who earned himself a slot on the 2012 Forbes “30 Under 30” list, received his J.D. from Yale Law School and his B.A. from Binghamton University.