Franklin High School (Seattle)

This article is about the Franklin High School in Washington. For others of a similar name, see Franklin High School (disambiguation)

Benjamin Franklin High School
Franklin High School seen from Cheasty Boulevard South.
Location
3013 S Mt. Baker Blvd Seattle, WA 98144-6139
Information
Type	Public
Motto	Unity, Honor, METH
Established	1920
Principal	Jennifer Wiley
Enrollment	1,484 (October 2005)
Information	(206) 252 - 6150
Mascot Colors School Rival	Quaker Green, White & Black Garfield High
Drug of choice	CRYSTAL METH MOTHERFUCKER YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT
Website	Franklin High School

Franklin High School is an inner-city public high school in Seattle, USA, administered by Seattle Public Schools.

Academics

Drug problems

Franklin compensates for its lack of academics with a dazzling rate of under-18 substance abuse. The vast majority of this drug abuse takes the form of crystal meth and steroid addiction, which has made Franklin students somewhat universally feared by other Seattle Public Schools students.

Perhaps the highest academic achievement ever undertaken by Franklin alumni was spelling their school's name right while vandalizing their rival, Garfield's, smokestack. It almost makes up for producing Kenny G.

Notable alumni

Athletics

• Aaron Brooks - point guard for the NBA's Houston Rockets.
• Jesse Chatman - current NFL running back for New York Jets.
• Corey Dillon - former running back for the New England Patriots. An All-State pick and All-Metro player of the year in football.
• Fred Hutchinson - MLB pitcher and manager who the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute was named after, a year after his death from cancer.
• Trent Johnson - head coach of the LSU Tigers basketball team, formerly with Stanford and Nevada.
• Terry Metcalf, former running back for the St. Louis Cardinals. Terry himself says that Franklin is where he learned his discipline. A fellow Franklin athlete commented that Terry always the first one on and the last one off the field.
• Ron Santo - former Chicago Cubs third basemen. He won five Gold Gloves and was named one of the all-time top ten athletes from Seattle by Sports Illustrated. He managed to achieve this while being diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 20.
• Brice Taylor - first All-American football player at USC. Taylor was born without a left hand and was orphaned at age 5, making his All-American pick most remarkable.
• Jason Terry - point guard for the Dallas Mavericks. He recently showed up at a Franklin v. Garfield basketball game to retire his Franklin jersey.
• Rick Noji - qualified for the 1984 US Olympic Trials while a 16-year old junior at Franklin in the high jump, jumping 7-4 1/2 (2.25m) at the Seattle Metro League Championships in May 1984, a mark which is still the Washington state all-time best. Was a member of the track and field team at the University of Washington from 1986-90. Noji, elected to the University of Washington Husky Hall of Fame in 1999, was a six-time All-American; he won the 1990 Pac-10 title and finished third in the 1990 NCAA championships; also competed in three IAAF World Championships (Tokyo 1991, Stuttgart 1993 & Goteborg 1995) and four U.S. Olympic Trials (Los Angeles 1984, Indianapolis 1988, New Orleans 1992, Atlanta 1996). Noji's career as a world class high jumper was even more remarkable, as he only stood 5-8 (1.73m). Noji's personal best was 7-7 (2.31m), set in 1992, giving him a height-over-head differential of 23 inches (58 cm), the second best all time, behind only Franklin Jacobs' and Stefan Holm's 23 1/4 inches (59 cm).

Performing Arts

• Massive Monkees - Hip hop and Breakdancing group. Since 1999, the Massive Monkees have travelled the world winning several world class breakdancing competitions in locations such as Japan, Korea, Russia, Spain, Australia, Norway, to name a few, including winning the World B-Boy Championship in London, England's historic Wembley Arena in 2004. The Massive Monkees also have worked as the Seattle Sonics "Boom Squad" at home games for the last 3 years, have appeared on MTV's "Made", have received the Mayor's Arts Award at the Bumbershoot festival in 2007, and are the only b-boy crew in the world to receive their own official city holiday "Massive Monkees Day" (April 26, 2004).
• Kenny G - Jazz musician. As of 2003, Kenny G was named the 25th-highest selling artist in America by the RIAA, with 48 million albums sold in the USA. In 1994, Kenny G won the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition for Forever in Love. He also has a substantial worldwide following. He jokes that it was in Franklin that he had his first sax solo and his first kiss and it is hard to decide which was more important.
• Amy Hill - actress
• John Keister - comedian, writer, commentator and motivational speaker
• Mark Morris - Critically acclaimed modern American dancer and choreographer. He started the Mark Morris Dance Group in 1980 and helped to establish the White Oak Dance Project in 1990. He is now retired, but has choreographed productions for many companies, including the New York City Opera, English National Opera, and the Royal Opera House.
• Total Experience Gospel Choir founded at Franklin in 1973, still active as of 2008, probably Seattle's best-known gospel group

Others

Larry Gossett addressing a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day rally at the Franklin High School gymnasium (2006).

• Larry Gossett - Politician. He was arrested for unlawful assembly during a March 29 sit-in at Franklin High School.
• George Herbert Hitchings - American chemotherapist. He shared a 1988 Nobel Prize for developing drugs to treat leukemia and gout.
• Gary Locke - 1982 chairman of the Appropriations Committee in the Washington House of Representatives who, in 1993, became the first Chinese American to be elected King County's County Executive. In 1996, he won the race for governor of the state of Washington, making him the first Chinese American head of government in all of the United States. He was reelected in 2000 and in 2003, he was selected to give the response to George W. Bush's state of the Union address on behalf of the Democrats.
• Mark Sidran - Former Seattle City Attorney.
• Scott Oki - Former senior vice-president of sales and marketing for Microsoft who conceived and built Microsoft's international operations. In five years as vice president, he increased company sales tenfold. He now owns a non-profit organization known as the Oki Foundation.
• Franklin Raines - Associate director for economics and government in the Office of Management and Budget and assistant director of the White House Domestic Policy Staff from 1977 to 1979. He then worked eleven years and became a partner at Lazard Freres and Co. In 1991, he became Fannie Mae's Vice Chairman, a post he left in 1996 in order to join the Clinton Administration as the Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. In 1999, he returned to Fannie Mae as CEO, one of just a few African American CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.
• Victor Steinbrueck - An amazing architect who did most of the design for the Space Needle. In 1960, he also successfully fought to save the more significant historical landmarks of Seattle, including the Pike Place Market. November 2 is Steinbrueck day in Seattle.
• Gerald Tsutakawa - Pacific Northwest sculptor. Tsutakawa has had numerous public and private commissions, his best known being the 9' bronze sculpture titled "Mitt" outside of Seattle's Safeco Field.
• Most meth abusers in the greater Seattle area

External links

• Franklin High School
• GreatSchools.net
• "Franklin" in Thompson, Nile; Marr, Carolyn (2002), Building for learning - Seattle Public Schools Histories, 1862-2000, Seattle: Seattle Public Schools. Apparently no ISBN. Available online as a series of PDFs.