Sisolak, in Culinary Academy tour, touts alternative career paths

Gov. Steve Sisolak on Tuesday toured a hospitality training academy in Las Vegas’ Historic Westside to emphasize the need for workforce development, job training and other alternatives to college for workers in Nevada.

“Education is no longer kindergarten through 12th grade. … It’s kindergarten through 12-plus, either community college, university or a skilled trade that you learn,” Sisolak said after touring the Culinary Academy at 710 W. Lake Mead. The Culinary Academy offers more than a dozen hospitality training programs, including programs geared for people who want to work in housekeeping, professional kitchens and more.

“Everybody isn’t going to be culinary. Everybody isn’t going to be an engineer. Everybody isn’t going to be a truck driver. We need to make all those things available,” he said.

The tour was the latest in a string of events in recent weeks by Sisolak to highlight parts of the off-year State of the State speech he gave last month. Speaking to members of the press Tuesday, he reiterated several of the initiatives he laid out in the speech, including making community college free for more people by 2025.

“The cost of attending a community college should not be the factor of getting someone into the program. We need to make it more available,” Sisolak said.

Edmund Wong, CEO of the Culinary Academy, said the school trained roughly 2,000 students per year prior to the pandemic through its 13 different programs, which range from three weeks to the longest program, for professional cooks, which lasts 16 weeks.

Wong said that the academy will launch a Culinary apprenticeship program in May that is authorized by the Nevada State Apprenticeship Council, a program that he said will be a “game changer.”

“Not everyone’s destined for a four-year college, or even a two-year community college type route. But to be able to provide a trade, especially like in Culinary, it’s just an incredible opportunity to speak to the larger part of our city and our community,” Wong said.

Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the agency that approved the Culinary apprenticeship.

Contact Colton Lochhead at clochhead@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ColtonLochhead on Twitter.