Wallingford Teacher Placed On Leave Over COVID-19 Vaccine Policy

WALLINGFORD, CT — Lyman Hall High School’s 2020 Teacher of the Year is facing termination over his refusal to get the COVID-19 vaccine or to submit to weekly testing per Gov. Ned Lamont’s mandate, according to multiple reports.

The Record-Journal reported Kahseim Outlaw, who has been a physical education and health teacher at Lyman Hall for 15 years, was placed on unpaid administrative leave on Monday.

Outlaw was told that he is no longer allowed on the property or inside the Lyman Hall building due to the mandate’s Sept. 27 compliance deadline, according to FOX 61.

Outlaw told the New Haven Register that he follows a holistic, vegan lifestyle involving natural foods and yoga and doesn't subscribe to conventional medicine and doesn't even take aspirin. His lifestyle doesn't allow for injections, and he was granted temporary approval for a religious exemption for the vaccine, but his request for a testing exemption was denied, according to the Register.

Outlaw, 40, announced in a post on Facebook that he wouldn’t comply with the state's mandate, saying it’s “all about alignment!”

“Sometimes in life we are forced to make decisions, and other times, the decision is made for us,” he wrote in the post. “I’ve had a fantastic experience as a public educator over the last 15 years and am grateful for all the wonderful students and colleagues I’ve been blessed to share life with. I love you all (past and present) and will always cherish our time together. I wish you all the peace, love, and strength you need to #makehealthhappenanyway.”

Outlaw also shared a nearly nine-and-a-half-minute video where he went over his thought process that led him to his decision.

“Life is all about alignment,” he said. “I do my best to align my life in the direction of health – mental health, physical health and spiritual health. And we find ourselves in this day and age very divided, very distracted and often times without a clue where we’re going and where we came from and where we’re at. So, something that’s happening now, not just in education, which is where my profession lies, but all across the board where everyone is sacrificing things in order to keep their jobs, their careers, their livelihoods and I totally understand that. When it comes to education, where I find myself now, there are certain things that I can and can’t align with. And one of those areas that I can’t align with is the medical mandates that are being forced on teachers and school staff and pretty much any state worker and any corporation with 100-plus people.”

Outlaw said that for “many of us, we don’t want to comply or submit or acquiesce to these things but we do out of a sense of uncertainty, out of a sense of fear, that we won’t be OK without kind of complying with these things, even though there is something inside of us, inside our heart and soul that speaks otherwise.”

“And I fall directly in that category, in that boat” Outlaw said. “As a dedicated, committed teacher for the past 15 years, I just started my 16th year, I find it very disheartening and difficult to process that we’re here in this state of affairs where someone who’s in a position like myself, who is forced to make a decision in the way of fear and anxiety or in the way of standing strong in my soul. And I’m choosing the latter, and I’m choosing to align myself in all aspects in the area of freedom, in the area of justice and the area of personal autonomy. I don’t think there’s anything more liberating than standing up for what you believe in, and I believe that each and every one of us has the God-given right to either make the decision to acquiesce to certain demands or decide to refuse that invitation.”

He said that he finds it very difficult to “prove” his health to someone other than himself “by ways of a test or to inject myself with a substance that is supposed to protect me from illness.”

“I do not judge or criticize or cast any kind of judgment on anybody who decides otherwise, but for me, it’s just not in the cards,” Outlaw said.

Outlaw said that he feels for administrators in the higher echelon of public education and managers and employers all across the spectrum because he knows they have to make some “very hard decisions.” He encouraged everyone to make their own decisions.

He said that he mulled it over many times in his head and talked it over with those closest to him and kept coming back to the same answer.

“So, all of this being said, I guess I’m saying farewell to public education,” Outlaw said. “That’s the message that I’m receiving. It’s bittersweet, more bitter than sweet, I think, but the sweet part of it is that it pushes me into a mindset, a realm of existence that is growing that has the potential to grow and that has a promise of even more enjoyment, more fulfillment. So, out of adversity comes greatness and this is certainly an adverse situation, but I’m hoping that, and I’m faithful, that greatness will come out of it.”

Outlaw told FOX 61 that he and his wife have seriously considered moving out of Connecticut to continue his teaching career.

The Record-Journal reported Outlaw said he is still figuring out what are the risks and benefits of termination versus resignation and other details.