Joliet Township High School students can get cooking in new culinary classrooms

Future culinary professionals at both Joliet Township High Schools are equipped with modern workspaces after School District 204 completed renovations this year for new cooking classrooms.

The first phase of installing state-of-the-art kitchens was completed at Joliet Central earlier this year and showcased in January.

The district marked the completion of the new culinary arts labs at Joliet West on Friday as school officials, staff and students gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

District 204 school board president Matthew Kennedy said, “I just want to thank everybody. It is amazing to actually see what our kids have access to, and they’ve got access to the best facilities in the state, and that’s going to give them the best future possible. And so, I’m extremely proud to be a part of that. I know the rest of our board is as well.”

District 204 Superintendent Dr. Karla Guseman said, “We are always very focused on making sure we have equitable facilities and programs at both campuses. One of the points of pride for us is that we are a consolidated high school and comprehensive, which means we have CTE courses.”

CTE stands for career and technical training. District 204 does not use a career center, rather it aims to have all its career and technical education classes in house. It currently has over 50 CTE classes available, including FACS (Family And Consumer Science), in which the culinary arts are the heart of the program, according to Guseman.

District 204 has a partnership with Joliet Junior College in that students can take advantage of dual credit classes where they can work toward obtaining professional certification and more easily join the hospitality sector after high school.

Seniors at both Joliet Central and Joliet West may earn a serve safe managers certification and sophomores and juniors may earn the serve safe food handling certification and/or serve safe allergen certification, according to previous reporting by the Herald News.

With the addition of industry-standard facilities at the high schools, a path towards professional training in the culinary arts is within reach for District 204 students now more than ever.

The culinary industry’s wages has been experiencing growth with a median pay of about $70,000 per year as of 2024 for chefs and head cooks, based on reports by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Joliet West senior Vanessa O’Connor said, “I feel like I have a lot more opportunities now than ever and I’m really appreciative of it,” as she admired shiny, chrome appliances and stainless-steel surfaces that sparkled in a well-lit classroom that felt more like a TV studio than a high school.

When asked why she’s going into culinary arts she said, “It’s really worth going into because it’s a necessity. I use it every single day. I don’t want to get fast food for every meal. Food is something that is a need. It is not a want. And you need to know how to cook food.”

The new layout of the facility closely resembles a TV style workspace giving the feeling one was on the set of “The Great British Bake Off.”

Culinary instructor Ryann Hager said, “The advanced technology is incredible. With the camera system we have now, we can demo just like it’s the Food Network for the students. They can see up on the monitors everything we’re doing. So, I anticipate a lot less intervention.”

In the previous culinary classrooms, students had a lot less hands on time because there was not as much space, Hager said.

“It wasn’t meant to prepare students for the industry,” she said, “We were only set up for six stations. And now that class sizes and the interest in culinary is growing, our old kitchens were packed.”

The motivation for these culinary classroom updates came from the 2023-2028 District 204 Strategic Plan, an agenda generated by the Strategic Planning Team, a group of officials, staff, parents and students from the community.

That initiative also details a master facilities plan which calls for many projects modernizing the two schools.

“Our 10-year master facilities plan in our strategic plan helps guide all of those decisions that we make,” said Kennedy when speaking with the Herald News.

“We long-range-plan for everything, so in our strategic planning, we include every stakeholder in the JTHS community. It is a joint effort,” he said.