Vel Phillips Memorial High School

Located at 201 S Gammon Rd, in Madison, Wisconsin, Vel Phillips Memorial High School is a substantial senior high that instructs 2,004 students (grades 9 through 12), one of the schools within Madison Metropolitan School District. That puts it 322% larger than the typical public school in Wisconsin, which averages around 475 students.

Madison Metropolitan School District runs 53 schools in total, collectively educating 25,155 students. Vel Phillips Memorial High School is one of those campuses.

Looking at the student body, Vel Phillips Memorial High School logs that the largest single group is White at 40%, but no single group is in the majority. Beyond that, the school shows 26% Hispanic, 15% Black, 9% multiracial, 9% Asian. That is meaningfully less White than the county at large, where the share is closer to 77%.

On the income-and-resources front, On paper, Vel Phillips Memorial High School has 127 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 15.8:1. Statewide, the average ratio sits near 14.6:1, putting Vel Phillips Memorial High School higher than the state norm the norm. Roughly 42% of students at Vel Phillips Memorial High School qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal. That share is north of Dane County's rate of about 32%.

With demographic context factored in, Vel Phillips Memorial High School performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 51.6%, the actual is 40.4%, a residual of -11.3 points.

In the broader community, the surrounding county (Dane County) reports that the typical household earns roughly $89,975 per year, roughly 55% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 5%. Across Dane County's 169 public schools (combined enrollment of about 78,525 students), Vel Phillips Memorial High School is one campus in the mix.

Ezekiel Gillespie Middle School is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.1 miles from this campus. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Vel Phillips Memorial High School. Among the 9 schools in that immediate cluster with test data (this one included), Vel Phillips Memorial High School ranks 8th on composite proficiency, behind the local average of 58.5%.

The campus sits in an inner-city setting.

Trend over the last 7 years. Over the past 7-year window, the student count expanded 3%: 1,944 students in 2018 compared to 2,004 in 2025. Hispanic enrollment moved from 15% to 26% across the same window.

Within the allk12 community for this school, posts here usually surface around sports schedules, lunch menu changes, and school spirit week. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.