Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Wynn hosts back-to-school fair at casino for employees

Aerial Photo Shoot: Jan. 16, 2013

Tom Donoghue / DonoghuePhotography.com

A view of Wynn Las Vegas and Encore taken from a Maverick Helicopter on Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2013, above the Las Vegas Strip.

Ana Zaragoza browsed education booths amid a crowd of co-workers during her lunch break today at Wynn Las Vegas, collecting pamphlets about resources she was learning about for the first time.

She had no idea about a tutoring website that her 16-year-old daughter could access or the scholarships available.

She also learned how to track online what her daughter buys for lunch. She’s eating too much junk food, Zaragoza discovered.

Zaragoza is a retail warehouse supervisor at Wynn. She makes it a point to be involved in her daughter’s education, but there are limitations. Her and her husband’s work schedules make it impossible to attend events like back-to-school fairs.

It’s an issue thousands of parents in the 24-hour Strip workforce face.

To address the problem, Wynn decided to bring a back-to-school fair to its employees for an Education Resource Day.

“I’m just really excited the company offered this so I don’t have to leave the property,” Zaragoza said. “There are so many things we can’t access over the weekend.”

The booths along an employee hallway brought a crowd of cocktail waitresses, dealers and housekeepers on break or off for the day. The event was held between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. to catch the overlap between lunch and the end of late shifts.

“The challenge for us being a 24-hour industry is that our parents might not be able to go to back-to-school events,” said Jocelyn Bluitt-Fisher, Wynn Resorts director of community relations. “This is our way of doing those events, to remove the barrier and bring the resources to them.”

Representatives from the Clark County School District, Vegas PBS, the United Way of Southern Nevada, UNLV and the College of Southern Nevada had booths at the event.

Parents were able to sign up their kids for free and reduced-price lunches, learn about scholarships and explore homework-help resources.

The district also provided information about its new Infinite Campus student database, which parents can access starting Tuesday. The system will allow parents real-time access to their children’s grades and attendance records.

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