Franklin Middle

There are no reviews for Franklin on any school rating sites, which is odd, considering its horrid reputation among those who attended.
I speak now as a junior in high school who had the misfortune of attending FMS. I'll never forget the worst two years of my life.
Hopefully FMS has changed and adapted over the years from a school that was so obstinate in its old-fashioned ways to a school that reacts to change positively. I have a feeling that with a principal such as Mrs. Eisenberg, that just isn't going to happen.
They terrorize students with their dress code, making sure girls always wear shorts that are as long as their fingertips straight down. I'm all for a dress code, really. I don't want to see anyone's butt falling out of their clothes and neither does anyone else. But it got to the point where girls were AFRAID to wear shorts in the heat- one infamous Spanish teacher, who will go unnamed, stood outside her door with a CLIPBOARD, writing down girl after girl's name and sending them to change into their gym shorts (which go past the knees.) I'm surprised the gym shorts let us show ankle, because, you know, legs are so scandalous. The more they sexualize natural body parts of girls, the worse they make the problem; girls aren’t going to stop wearing shorts anytime soon. STOP PERPETUATING THIS RIDICULOUS STANDARD. SHORTS ARE NOT SIN.
I also pray that they’ve changed their rigid phone policy. One day after school, at about 5 o’clock (school let out at 3) I took out my phone and called my mother to pick me up. Eisenberg came up behind me, SNATCHED MY PHONE, and demanded to know why I was on my phone. …Yes, this was at 5 pm. The halls were completely vacant; I was not disturbing anyone. I just wanted to get home. After explaining that I was calling so I wouldn’t be stuck at school till the next morning, she proceeded to refuse the fact that she was in the wrong and told me she was taking my phone to the office. She then humiliated me to an office lady, saying that I was on my phone when I shouldn’t have been.
If they want to ban phones in class, ok, that’s understandable. But when it’s 5 pm and all kids are trying to do is get home… I question your motive for banning phones. It seems like to me, it’s just stubbornness to the fact that technology is advancing and kids all possess phones, not to make sure students are learning when they should be. This was back when the most advanced phones were the ones that had minimal data and their sole purpose was texting through little keyboards/calling (they could only display HTML websites on a slow browser; pre-iPhones and Galaxies,) so I wonder how the policy has changed as phones have become more advanced and prevalent.
The teachers were sadly forgettable; I can’t recall learning much in middle school at all. A great wealth of my knowledge came from elementary school and high school, which is pitiful. I don’t have a single teacher I’d come back to. The most memorable staff member was the principal’s right hand woman who was notorious for her incessant harassing of students. She would berate me for checking out what lunch was being served that day (accusing me of cutting the line) and tell me to stop being so defensive when I explained what I was doing. With these two, there’s just no way to win. Even now, the very mention of her name induces shudders in those who attended FMS. It really was a loony staff. My friend and I once got publicly lectured (yelled at) in a hallway by a math teacher who heard us discussing the suicide in a history video we were shown (she assumed we were disrespecting suicide victims. This school is full of assumptions.) Even my bus driver was loony, throwing fits of rage whenever someone talked. He kept the bus full of middle school children silent. What an incredibly bizarre time middle school was here, reflecting upon it.
The fact that that education is mediocre and it’s just an overall unaccepting, uncomfortable environment is really detrimental to kids who are struggling with their transition from childhood to adulthood. This is a crucial part of a child’s life, and spending it here made for quite a miserable time. The whole two years I felt so uninspired, lost, trapped, and confused; definitely an inherent part of the transition, yet a miserable part that could have been assuaged in a positive environment.
You do not learn the “real world” here, you learn the world the higher-ups wish was still the world. High school shocked me into the real world that FMS should’ve eased me in to. The bar was raised significantly in all ways, especially academically. With these responsibilities came a ton of freedom, freedom that FMS taught didn’t exist (and even if it did, we didn’t deserve it.) Thank God I didn’t waste another second in FMS, where any desire to better yourself is sucked away. At one point, the carpets were being redone and we had a concrete floor… to which students reacted by saying, “Now it really looks like a prison,