Benjamin Franklin High School (New Orleans)

Benjamin Franklin High School is a charter high school and a magnet high school in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Commonly nicknamed “Franklin” or “Ben Franklin”, the school was founded in 1957 as a school for gifted children. Ben Franklin is consistently named the No. 1 school in the state of Louisiana and has been ranked by U.S. News & World Report as the No. 15 charter school in the nation. In 1990, it moved to its current location on the campus of the University of New Orleans (UNO) in the Lake Terrace/Lake Oaks neighborhood of Orleans Parish, near Lake Pontchartrain. The school was damaged by several feet of flood water due to Hurricane Katrina in the fall of 2005, and efforts to reopen the school were covered by nationwide news agencies. The school is part of the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB), yet it operates as a charter school and is not administered directly by the agency.