“Right now going to work feels like suffering,” one staff member wrote in response to a school climate survey. “Staff are walking on eggshells at school every day,” another said. “Check on Van Hise staff,” a third said. “We are not okay.”
The responses pointed to the school’s principal, Rebecca Stein, as the root of their concerns — echoing public complaints from a group of parents over the last school year.
In the 2025-26 school year, the parents submitted a formal complaint to the Madison Metropolitan School District about Stein’s leadership. From the beginning of Stein’s tenure in the 2023-24 school year, parents previously told the Cap Times as well, they’d heard concerns from teachers about micromanaging and bullying under Stein.
However, the district found Stein didn’t violate any policies and concluded the school’s culture challenges predated Stein’s tenure, according to messages sent to families from Deputy Superintendent TJ McCray that were shared with the Cap Times.
“The review illuminated a deeply complex situation, identifying an unsustainable school climate marked by erosion of trust and significant communication breakdowns across the community that existed prior to the current leadership,” McCray wrote in a May email.
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Van Hise has long been one of the taxpayer funded Madison K-12 System’s least diverse schools (16.7% “economically disadvantaged” – Wisconsin DPI). Curiously, we taxpayers expanded it a few years ago, despite space in other schools…..
27.3% of Van Hise’s 4k to 3rd grade students (71) scored below 75% of the students in the national comparison group.