'Just how it is for me right now.' For many teens, work now comes before school

During the Tuesday lunch rush at The Best Pho and Thai Restaurant in Renton, 16-year-old Ngoc-Linh Truong bagged up take-out orders as her mom tossed onions in a flaming wok.

This is Truong’s brother’s restaurant, and Truong, a junior at Franklin High School in south Seattle, usually helps one or two nights a week during the school year.

Her brother had to lay off his entire staff when business plummeted due to the coronavirus, and Truong now works six days a week alongside her brother and mom. She’s at the restaurant from 10 in the morning to 10:30 at night -- on top of a full load of online classes.

“It's difficult, because sometimes when a lot of orders come in at the same time, it gets really stressful, because in the back of your head, you know, ‘Oh, crap, I have this assignment due tonight. And it's almost 9 p.m. and a lot of customers are still putting in orders," Truong said.

Truong’s teachers have been understanding about her work schedule, she said, and her family encourages her to put school first.

Still, Truong said, it can be difficult to make it all work.

For many kids like Truong, the focus in the past few months has become keeping the lights on at family businesses, or at home - or saving up for college or to move out after high school.

Long hours - even overtime - are now legal for teens because the state changed youth work restrictions due to the pandemic.

At the state Department of Labor & Industries, spokesperson Matthew Erlich said that when school is in session, teens can usually only work a few hours a day, and no more than 16 to 20 hours a week.

“There are limits to the time teens can work during the school year, because the focus should be on their homework, not working in a store, something like that,” Erlich said.

But when schools closed in March, Erlich says, his agency got a lot of calls from businesses wanting to hire teens. So L&I quickly changed the usual school year regulations to allow kids to work summer hours: eight hours a day, 40 hours a week for 14- and 15-year-olds, and 48 hours a week for 16- and 17-year-olds.

L&I also removed the usual requirement that businesses get school approval before hiring a student.

“This occurred as schools were closed and it wasn’t clear what changes were going to be made after that in regards to virtual or other remote learning opportunities,” Erlich said.

On March 23, the same day L&I changed its work rules, the state also required school districts to ensure all students were engaged in distance learning.

That creates a tension for many teens: They can now work full-time or overtime -- at a point when many have family members who’ve been laid off or furloughed.

They’re also expected to be full-time students.

At Kentwood High School in Kent, English teacher Kris Hill says some of her students are working 40 to 60 hours a week -- and those are just the one-third of students she’s heard from since school closed in March.

“I had a student email me, ‘This is the first time I’ve opened my school laptop this entire time, and I have no idea what we’re doing or what’s going on. But I’ve been working many hours a week,’ and he works at a grocery store,” Hill said.

There’s no good data on how much teenagers are working now. Teachers and advocates for children said they know of students working in many food service and retail jobs, with some older students picking up shifts at Amazon warehouses and restaurant delivery services.

Union officials told KUOW that demand for grocery workers spiked as people started cooking many more meals at home and stocking up on staples. At the same time, many grocery workers cut back their hours due to vulnerability to the coronavirus, or to care for their kids, leaving a vacuum that, in many cases, teens are likely filling.

As major grocery chains have added $2 an hour in hazard pay, that meant many teens have been able to make more money than ever.

“It was over the last few weeks I've realized, holy cow, when we're looking at essential workers, many of them are students -- my students!” Hill said.

At the Equity in Education Coalition, which advocates for students of color, Executive Director Sharonne Navas said she understands why work takes precedence for many students now. Many lack the computers or internet they need to even do online learning -- where most instruction is taking place -- so school is inaccessible.

“For a lot of our students, they need to make sure that their parents could pay rent, or food and electricity, especially for our kids whose parents don’t have documentation to be in this country and can’t get assistance from the state,” Navas said.

Rather than accept that some kids will need to put work before school right now, Navas questions why social safety nets have not protected struggling families from that trade-off.

“There's the ideology that students of color, immigrant or low-income, that their education can be placed on hold for the sacrifice of helping their family out, when we would not be asking affluent white families to be making the same sacrifice,” Navas said.

At The Best Pho and Thai Restaurant in Renton, Ngoc-Linh Truong said it’s hard to relate to her friends who don’t have to work right now.

“All my friends are kind of just staying at home right now. Some of them are just procrastinating, not doing their work,” Truong said. “I don't think they understand what it's like [for me], because I don't have a lot of time -- all of my work is all the projects at the same time.”

Still, Truong said, she’s doing the best she can to fit schoolwork, in between chopping jalapenos and limes, and ringing up and bagging orders.

“I wake up and I pretty much go straight to work. Number one in my head right now is just focusing on getting things at the restaurant done and then assignments come second,” Truong said.

“That's just how it is for me right now.”