In response to the COVID-19 crisis, school districts worked quickly to roll out distance learning plans in the spring. Sometimes these plans impinged upon or were directly in conflict with provisions found in collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) negotiated between teachers' unions and district administration. In this brief, we unpack how urban school systems changed CBAs to make way for learning under COVID-19 conditions. We review COVID-19–related contract changes in one hundred one urban school districts around the country. We find that twenty-five urban school districts returned to the bargaining table with teachers’ unions to negotiate short-term fixes to CBAs that allowed for more flexibility to implement distance learning. These contract changes focused on several areas of the CBA, including compensation, workload, non-teaching duties, evaluation, leave, and technology. We argue that the lessons learned in spring contract negotiations have implications for the design and implementation of fall schooling plans, and that how fall schooling plays out will shape teacher morale and labor relations beyond the 2020–21 school year.

中文翻译：

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工会，集体谈判和对COVID-19的回应

为了应对COVID-19危机，学区在春季迅速开展工作，推出了远程学习计划。有时，这些计划影响到教师工会与地区行政部门之间谈判的集体谈判协议（CBA）中的规定，或与之直接冲突。在本简介中，我们介绍了城市学校系统如何更改CBA，以便在COVID-19条件下为学习铺路。我们审查了全国110个城市学区与COVID-19相关的合同变更。我们发现，有25个城市学区与教师工会一起返回谈判桌，以商讨CBA的短期解决方案，从而为实施远程学习提供了更大的灵活性。这些合同变更集中在CBA的多个领域，包括薪酬，工作量，非教学职责，评估，休假和技术。我们认为，春季合同谈判中汲取的教训对秋季教育计划的设计和实施有影响，秋季教育如何发挥作用将影响2020-21学年以后教师的士气和劳资关系。