SATURDAY, DECEMBER 25 , 2021. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ M2 B3
seat of a vehicle in the 5500 block
of Livingston Road at 1:50 a.m.,
police said.
Cruz was pronounced dead at
the scene.
— Paul SchwartzmanVictim identified in
Germantown shootingA 25-year-old man who was
shot and killed inside a home in
Germantown on Thursday
evening was identified by
Montgomery County police
Friday as Jahandar Rahman
Darvish.
At about 5:45 p.m. Thursday,
police say they responded to a call
of multiple shots fired in the
19300 block of Circle Gate Drive
in Germantown. Upon entering
the home, officers found Darvish
dead from apparent gunshot
wounds.
Darvish comes from a
prominent local family, known
for its successful automotive
business.
“This is a very difficult time for
our family, especially Jahan’s
mother,” his aunt Tammy Darvish
said. “We want the truth and, of
course, we want accountability.
We urge anyone that knows
anything to come forward in the
spirit of humanity.”
Police said they believe the
homicide to be “an isolated
incident.” No suspect is in
custody.
— Rachel WeinerTHE DISTRICT
Police identify two men
killed in shootingD.C. police have identified two
men who were killed in a
shooting in Southeast
Washington on Thursday
afternoon.
Marcus Thomas, 37, and
Russell Williams, 28, both of
Southeast, died in a shooting in
the 4200 block of Fourth Street
SE, police said. Another man, who
was not identified, suffered “life-
threatening injuries.”
Officers arriving at the scene
just after 1:21 p.m. found one
victim who was dead.
Investigators then learned that
two other men were seeking
medical treatment at a nearby
hospital.
Police have said they are
looking for a silver sedan —
possibly an Audi — with tinted
windows and a sunroof in
connection with this case.
— Paul SchwartzmanMARYLANDMan found fatally shot
in vehicle in Oxon HillPrince George’s County
detectives are investigating after
a man was found fatally shot in a
car in Oxon Hill early Thursday,
police said.
Investigators found John Cruz,
32, of Oxon Hill in the driver’sLOCAL DIGEST
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notice.”
Montgomery, like many school
systems, also uses other strate-
gies to reduce quarantines. When
students are properly masked
and one tests positive, quaran-
tines are not mandated for close
contacts, as long as they are
enrolled in — or sign up for — the
school system’s coronavirus
screening program. In those cas-
es, students continue to attend
in-person classes but can’t partic-
ipate in high-risk activities and
are expected to quarantine out-
side of school.
Nationally, some school sys-
tems eased up on quarantine
rules starting last school year.
Jennifer Martin, president of
the Montgomery County Educa-
tion Association, the 14,000-
member teachers union, said it
was too early to comment on the
efficacy of test-to-stay, which
many teachers don’t know
enough about yet. But broadly
speaking, Martin said, teachers
recognize that students have
gone through a lot and learn best
in person. “If we are safe together,
we want to be together,” she said.
Hasson, the mother of two in
Gaithersburg, said that as a psy-
chologist she worries about the
mental health toll of more missed
school days for students. She
thinks test-to-stay will help.
“There is no way to have zero
risk,” Hasson said. “But this
would allow the student to con-
tinue to go to school, while mini-
mizing the risk of an outbreak.”
[email protected]percentage points on math mea-
sures among fifth-graders for the
year that ended in June com-
pared with 2019, the last regular
school year that ended before the
pandemic.
“Test-to-stay is an incredibly
equitable and effective program,”
said Reesman, urging it be de-
ployed “far more widely” and
used for other circumstances be-
yond lunch. “We should not have
entire-class or entire-grade quar-
antines in high-vaccinated Mont-
gomery County,” she said. “We are
a tool-rich county. We’re just not
using the tools we have very
wisely.”
Stoddard attributed the slow
ramping up of test-to-stay to a
desire to scrutinize a new pro-
gram to ensure it would not
create new risks. He also said
nurses have not been easy to
come by so many months into the
pandemic.
At New Hampshire Estates El-
ementary, in Silver Spring, PTA
President Kea Anderson said
nearly half of K-2 students were
in quarantine the Tuesday before
winter break, following 13 days of
accumulating cases. She posted a
tweet asking how to bring test-to-
stay into the high-needs school.
“Test-to-stay is kind of a mys-
tery,” Anderson said. “How do we
get it? I don’t know.”
For school families, quaran-
tines are highly disruptive, she
said: “It’s not easy for many of our
families to switch to virtual learn-
ing because they can’t stay home
or arrange care at a moment’ssay there needs to be greater
urgency, claiming Montgomery
County has been too slow to roll
out the practice in its 209 schools
and too tight-lipped about how
the effort is going.
Jennifer Reesman, a parent
leader who has testified before
the Montgomery County school
board on the issue, says the pace
has cost students important in-
school hours that could have
helped with pandemic learning
losses. Every day and every hour
of instruction counts, she said.
Data released this fall in Mont-
gomery County showed a de-
crease of 35 percentage points in
literacy readiness among second-
graders and a decrease of 26tests and gather parental permis-
sion for the testing, Aspinall said.
In Montgomery, rapid tests are
not an obstacle, according to
Stoddard. “The biggest challenge,
by leaps and bounds, is staffing,”
he said. The county has 75 extra
contract employees, all in nurs-
ing, to bolster testing and other
health efforts in schools, he said,
and expects to bring more into
schools in January.
“The limitations have often
been the availability of personnel,
as in people who are interested in
doing this type of testing are
available and are ready to come
on board rapidly,” Stoddard said
Wednesday.
Still, supporters of the practicesaid Earl Stoddard, assistant
chief administrative officer for
Montgomery County and part of
the leadership team on the effort.
What’s more, none of the stu-
dents who stayed in school tested
positive, he said.
“It was definitely successful,”
he said. “We’re going to need to do
more of it.”
Stoddard said that while omi-
cron appears to cause less serious
illness, the variant’s high trans-
missibility will result in more
cases, which under current CDC
guidelines could mean more po-
tential quarantines — “thus mak-
ing test-to-stay more important.”
In the Washington region, test-
to-stay is still new — and untried
in school systems in Arlington,
Alexandria and Prince George’s
counties. School officials in Fair-
fax County submitted a request to
be part of a test-to-stay pilot pro-
gram Virginia is planning for the
new year, a spokeswoman said.
School system officials in
Montgomery say the practice is
being used for exposures during
eating or drinking, essentially
lunch time — when masks are off
but there is no forced exhalation
as would happen during sports
activities. There have been a lim-
ited number of such instances,
schools spokesman Christopher
Cram said.
For all of the promise of test-to-
stay, there are challenges, too.
Nationally, some school systems
have struggled to find sufficient
staffing to coordinate testing, ac-
quire the necessary stock of rapidschool system, where Hasson’s
son is in fifth grade, conducted a
trial run of the practice this fall
and plans to expand test-to-stay
in the new year. Nationally, a
handful of states have recom-
mended the practice, said Mara
Aspinall, a professor at Arizona
State University who has studied
the issue.
And support for it is growing as
the highly contagious omicron
variant spreads, threatening a
spike in quarantines.
“I expect schools will increas-
ingly adopt it next semester,” As-
pinall said. “It helps kids stay in
school and assure everyone in the
school community that class-
rooms are as safe as possible.”
The CDC released two studies
— in Illinois and California —
showing the effectiveness of the
approach, with CDC Director Ro-
chelle Walensky describing test-
to-stay as “a promising and now
proven practice” that “works to
keep unvaccinated children in
school safely.”
In Montgomery, home to Mary-
land’s largest school system, the
protocols were in use at seven
schools as of mid-December. Stu-
dents exposed to a virus-positive
classmate were able to do rapid
testing each morning for five
school days, if they had parental
permission, rather than simply go
home.
The result was significant: a
combined 240 days of in-person
learning spared from quarantine,
SCHOOLS FROM B1
After a fall trial run, Montgomery plans to expand test-to-stay in the new year
RICKY CARIOTI/THE WASHINGTON POST
Buses parked at the transportation depot in Bethesda on Aug. 12.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released two
studies showing the effectiveness of the test-to-stay practice.Soon, he said, he was getting
pushback from some con-
gregants and clergy. One told
him, he said, that half the church
members were Trump voters and
that his problem was that he
didn’t love them.
He put in his notice at the end
of 2020 and left in March.
Since then he joined his fian-
cee’s church and is grateful lead-
ership is encouraging of vaccines
and what Gustafson sees as an
active way to love one’s neigh-
bors. He also reconsidered the
ministry career path and is now
working for a nonprofit with
youth in the judicial system.
“I think I would have wound
up leaving, but covid and a lot of
stress exacerbated things and
accelerated the timeline,” he
said.
Aldape’s exit in March from
First Baptist Church, near Logan
Circle, has left her torn, and
working in therapy to figure out
what ministry means for her.
Most Latino churches don’t
have female clergy, and she was
raised in mostly White Protes-
tant churches. To her, many of
the latter aren’t serious about
confronting white supremacy.
That was part of why she left.
Christmas Eve, after work, she
planned to go to her fiance’s
relatives for dinner.
“Now I’m asking myself:
What’s next? What does this next
season look like?” she said. “I
don’t think I’ll be working in a
church any time soon.”
[email protected]an pastors doing a program on
anti-racism and managing some
affordable housing properties
for the church.
The unexpected slip into re-
tirement and fewer demands
feels easier, in a way, but the way
it happened — at the hands of the
pandemic — is also disconcert-
ing and disorienting.
“Even though I was of retire-
ment age, you feel you’re letting
people down,” he said. “It’s a kind
of loneliness. Like you’re not
making a difference.”
Joel Gustafson was at the start
of his career when the pandemic
hit. He had recently started
working as a worship leader and
youth pastor at a church in his
hometown of Grand Rapids,
Mich., and was planning to make
a career of ministry.
Soon he was struggling with
the segment of his 100-person
church that saw mask-wearing
as an issue of individual rights
and refused to wear them.
Gustafson found himself at
odds with higher-ranking clergy.
“I felt like, if people care more
about their individual rights
than caring for their neighbor,
then it’s a matter of discipleship,”
he recalled. He was told to “focus
on Jesus,” he says.
Then came fall 2020, and
President Donald Trump’s com-
ment in a presidential debate to
right-wing extremists to “stand
back and stand by.”
Gustafson posted to his Face-
book page that he was disap-
pointed in Trump.emails and working on a puzzle.
He had been planning to drive
to D.C. for Christmas Eve ser-
vices at his old church, but those
were canceled because of worries
about the new omicron variant
of the coronavirus.
Knoll still does a lot of service,
coordinating a group of Luther-preaching to his congregation
for a final time over Zoom.
“It was very, very sad, and very,
very weird,” he said.
Friday he was with his wife,
son and his son’s fiancee at their
retirement home on a pond that
spills into the Chesapeake Bay.
He spent the morning answeringand homeless, revved up.
The church started live-
streaming services on Facebook,
worshiped and did Bible classes
on Zoom. They hired staff to
create YouTube videos including
cartoons for children.
Then many younger members
left D.C. and stopped coming
virtually. Knoll, 66, began to
question his usefulness.
He saw people suffering and
felt he couldn’t help them. For
people with mental and intellec-
tual disabilities who can’t use
Zoom, all he could do was drop
off crafts kits.
Two longtime parishioners
moved into assisted living and he
couldn’t help. When he finally
could visit them, months later, he
had to stay eight feet away from
them, masked, and the older men
couldn’t hear.
“That weighed on me over the
course of the year,” he said.
Knoll looked at younger pas-
tors at other churches who were
doing more with technology.
They had cameras around the
church and better microphones.
“I felt, I’m just not doing what
I should be doing. I know that’s
not true, I’m trying my best. But
for those who really care for their
people, you feel, what other
things could I do?” he said. “You
did kind of question, why is this
all happening?”
Knoll decided to retire several
years earlier than he’d planned,
and his final service was last
Christmas Eve, when he stood
alone in a darkened sanctuary,pastoral burnout has been high.
The past few years have jostled
and rocked the labor market
overall, with many millions los-
ing and changing jobs either by
force, by choice or a combination
of the two. But some research
and anecdotes suggest this peri-
od is a crisis for American clergy.
A Barna survey of Protestant
pastors published last month
found 38 percent said they’d
considered quitting full-time
ministry in the past year.
Matthew Manion, director of
the Center for Church Manage-
ment at Villanova University,
which was founded to help Cath-
olic parishes, doesn’t know if
priest exits are rising, “but stress
levels are through the roof.”
Diocesan leaders say there is
an increase in requests for emo-
tional and mental support to
deal with the pandemic, racial
awakening and political polar-
ization, he said.
“Clergy are meant to be there
for all their people — so if their
people are having more challeng-
es, more stress — and what’s
made it particularly challenging
is they can’t be together in their
normal ways of being together.
Spiritual counseling and being
present for people is very, very
difficult,” he said.
Tom Knoll had led First Trinity
Lutheran Church in downtown
D.C. for 37 years when the pan-
demic hit. At first Knoll, whose
career has focused on the poor
CLERGY FROM B1
Many clergy step down after disheartening time with the pandemic and politics
MICHAEL WILLIAMSON/THE WASHINGTON POST
The Rev. Alyssa Aldape, at home in Washington, is one of several
clergy who have left ministry feeling burned out in recent years.“Now I’m asking myself: What’s next? What does
this next season look like? I don’t think I’ll be
working in a church any time soon.”
The Rev. Alyssa Aldape, formerly of First Baptist Church in WashingtonBY JASMINE HILTON
AND MARTIN WEIL
Two men were shot and killed
in separate incidents on Christ-
mas Eve in the District and
Prince George’s County, police
said.
Both shootings occurred
around the time the sun set
Friday within an hour of each
other. They appeared to have no
connection.
The later of the two was re-
ported in the District about
5:10 p.m. in the 200 block of 56th
Street NE, in the Grant Park area,
according to police and neigh-
bors.
One neighbor said he heardthe sound of five gunshots. He
looked outside and saw a man
lying on the ground.
He was still there, on a resi-
dential street of two story
houses, more than an hour lat-
er, as investigators swarmed
around.
In an interview, the neighbor
seemed to be left in a reflective
mood by proximity to violent
tragedy.
“We become accustomed to
hearing about shootings all
across the District and country,
but until it happens right in front
of your home.. .” he said,
his voice trailing off. His name
was withheld for privacy rea-
sons.Only about a half hour before
the slaying in Northeast, a
man was shot and killed in
Prince George’s, according to the
police.
He was found about 4:45 p.m.
in the 4400 block of Branch
Avenue, after a shooting was
reported.
The man was found in an SUV,
suffering from gunshot wounds
to the upper body, the police
said.
The site was in the Marlow
Heights/Temple Hills area, near
St. Barnabas Road.
The man was taken to a hospi-
tal, where he died, police said.
[email protected]
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