Public schools in Pennsylvania are required to provide English Language Development (ELD) instruction to all English Language Learners (ELs) in content classes through collaboration between classroom teachers and English as a Second Language (ESL) specialists (Pennsylvania Department of Education, 2017, July 1). There are many barriers to effective collaboration such as scheduling, unclear roles, and ineffective materials (Noyes, 2016; Peercy et al., 2016b) which leave teachers feeling underprepared to work with ELs (Hopkins et al., 2019). To further complicate this issue, in April 2020, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf closed all school entities in the state in response to the COVID-19 pandemic (Rivera, 2020, April 9) forcing school districts to move to online learning platforms. This qualitative phenomenological study served to explore the experiences and the perceptions of Pennsylvania elementary ESL specialists and classroom teachers regarding their collaborative partnerships when shifting to a distance learning model. Participants of this study discussed experiencing stress, changing roles/responsibilities, increased quantity of collaboration, and time/scheduling challenges over the school closures. It was evident from this study that classroom teachers and ESL specialists placed a high value on collaboration and respected their collaborative partners throughout the distance learning environment. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]