Benjamin Franklin High School for Finance & Information Technology

The dataset does not include school-level ELA, math, or science proficiency rates for Benjamin Franklin, so a direct comparison to the district averages of roughly 57% ELA and 54% math isn't possible. The school does offer AP Courses and STEM programming, and with an unscreened admissions policy, the academic mix likely spans a wide range of incoming preparation. Treat any anecdotal outcome claims with caution absent the underlying scores.

Day-to-day climate looks unusually calm: zero reported suspensions, and parent trust scores are notably high — 95% parent-teacher trust, 94% parent satisfaction — both meaningfully above district norms. Teacher-reported trust tells a more mixed story, with 81% of teachers trusting the principal and only 71% reporting collegial trust among peers; the teacher survey response rate is also very low (20 teachers), so those figures should be read with a grain of salt. The combination suggests a school where families feel heard and students stay in class, but where the staff's internal dynamics may merit a closer look.

Benjamin Franklin's student body is 61% Black, 16% Hispanic, 15% Asian, 5% Native American, and 2% White, with 19% of students having IEPs and an economic need index of 70.3% — meaning a high share of students come from lower-income households. That mix is notably different from the surrounding Cambria Heights neighborhood, where the median household income is over $115,000 and homeownership tops 86%. In practice this is a neighborhood school whose student body pulls from well beyond the immediate zip code, serving families whose economic reality differs sharply from the blocks around the building.

Cambria Heights is a family-rooted, largely owner-occupied Queens neighborhood with a median home value near $594,000 and a 32.7% rate of adults with a bachelor's degree or higher. About 14.6% of households have children, and the poverty rate is unusually low at 5.4%, pointing to a stable, middle-class residential base. Despite those suburban-leaning demographics, the school draws a student body that's economically much more varied than its immediate surroundings would suggest.

There are no subway stations within a 20-minute walk of the school, so families will likely depend on a car, school bus, or local bus service to get there.