edible schoolyard
CLASS COOK
A top high school culinary
academy calls Carson City home.
WRITTEN BY STEPHANIE STIKA • PHOTO BY DAVID CALVERT
Chef Penny Reynolds’ enthusiasm is clearly affecting her students.
Walking into Carson City High School’s commercial kitchen, you get the feeling there is more going on here than a standard secondary education.
Reynolds graduated from Carson High and returned 12 years ago to what was then a fairly normal home economics program. Two years into it, she wrote a grant and received $250,000 to install a commercial kitchen.
CULINARY SUCCESS
The home economics program is now an award-winning culinary academy. The teams from Carson High have won the state championships four years running. And they took eighth in the national competition in Kansas City on April 28 this year. That means with 285,000 kids participating, our home team was in the top 32 of entrants.
“I could never be more proud of a bunch of kids,” Reynolds says. “They shined and made the state of Nevada proud.”
KITCHEN ACTION
There is a buzz in the kitchen as I interview Reynolds. The students are clearly comfortable, but there is an overwhelming sense that they take this endeavor seriously. Reynolds is confident, firm, and supportive, and clearly wants these kids to succeed. She speaks about them with pride, which shows how much she believes in them.
In the 12 years she has been at the school, all of her seniors from Culinary Three have applied to colleges. More remarkable is that they have all either entered the military after graduation or have gone to and graduated from post-secondary education schools. Reynolds takes the lives of her senior Culinary Three students seriously. Each week they are mandated to bring in scholarship applications.
“I would be in a big hole if it weren’t for Chef Reynolds,” says Senior Cameron Childers. “Thanks to her, I’ve earned $13,000 this year in scholarships.”
COOKING MAKES CENTS
Funding is a problem not just for the students’ future, but also for the program itself. Program participants make up for the annual budget cuts with fundraisers and by operating a student-run restaurant.
The restaurant is open three days a week and is open to the public. It’s run entirely by Culinary Two students, except for the soup and salad bar, which is run by those in Culinary Three. The students do everything from planning the menu to testing the recipes, as well as preparing and serving the food. Reynolds says locals call the restaurant “the best kept secret in Carson City.”
For details about the program and restaurant,
visit Carsonhigh.com/carsonhi/depts/vocational/reynolds.
Reno resident Stephanie Stika is a horticulturist and avid gardener. She also has a landscape design and consultation company called Your Plant Guru (Yourplantguru.com). She believes everyone has a right to healthy, nutritious food. She grows as much as she can in her backyard garden to eat, share with friends, and donate to her community.
