Martin County superintendent’s case vs. suspended teacher a joke
We witnessed an eight-hour hearing at the Martin County Courthouse concerning the possible termination of Matthew Theobald’s teaching contract.
Matt, a Martin County School District teacher, was suspended and recommended for termination for making a private Facebook post about Charlie Kirk on Matt’s mother’s account.
Kirk was tragically murdered in September 2025. After two weeks, Matt was suspended without pay by Superintendent Michael Maine. There was an overwhelming response for Matt at the Martin County School Board meeting. It was recommended to have a hearing presided over by a judge that just happened. The judge’s recommendation will help decide the final decision by the board.
The district had six months to prepare the case. It was completely discombobulated. Matt’s teachers union lawyer exposed the inconsistences of Maine’s case.
First, Matt had outstanding teacher evaluations for 17 years. There was not one violation in his files. There was no proof he ever said or taught anything about Kirk to his students. Not one parent or student testified against Matt. Maine was afraid of people picketing at schools, which did not happen.
Why did Matt receive a harsh punishment? Simply because he was the teachers union president. Maine seems out to destroy the Martin County Education Association.
A teacher was brought in to testify against Matt. It so happens this teacher is a representative of a competing union. Five downtown administrators testified against Matt.
This hearing was a waste of taxpayer’s money. As a retired 37-year teacher of Martin County, this process has been a low point for the school system. I call it “Salem Witch Trials 2.0.”
Maybe Maine should be the one terminated.
Martin Bielicki, Stuart, retired after 37 years as an American history teacher, dean at Martin County High School and Florida High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame girls’ volleyball coach
Let growth and development pay for Tri-Rail
Tri-Rail is for many the only means of transportation to people’s jobs. As a frequent rider, I see these people dressed for work, some with their bicycles, to complete their commute. Additionally, there are many travelers and students aboard.
Tri-Rail is a cost-effective and convenient means of transportation to both the Fort Lauderdale and Miami airports and stops in between.
In Miami, you can hop off of Tri-Rail, get onto Metro Rail, and spend the day enjoying all Miami has to offer. It’s much better and less expensive than Brightline.
I propose the powers that be initiate a fee to these wealthy builders and their buyers for their increase in population. Call it a relocation fee.
Since many of these builders and new residents seem to be in the mega-bucks arena, they shouldn’t miss a few measly million to help the average working stiff.
Jan Belwood, Palm City
He didn’t get paid to attend No Kings rally, but has his own take
Some critics of the No Kings rallies that drew record crowds in Stuart, Fort Pierce, Vero Beach and across the country March 28 suggest a secret cabal — probably underwritten by George Soros — shelled out millions of dollars to persuade Americans to join the anti-Trump demonstrations.
There is a certain logic to the idea no one would protest without an incentive. Why go to all the trouble? I get it.
March 28 was a beautiful beach day on the Treasure Coast. My family was in town for a short visit — a sister, two daughters, one husband and three grandchildren. A warm, sunny afternoon beckoned. Why trade that family time for two hours standing in a noisy crowd on a hot sidewalk?
You couldn’t pay me enough!
But my sister and I dutifully joined the rally outside Fort Pierce City Hall.
A motley group of fellow Americans — young and old, mostly White — shared greetings, shouted and chanted. Handwritten signs made their positions clear: No Kings! Dump Trump! Protest is Patriotic!
Some signs showed dry humor: Only Butterflies are Monarchs! Even Introverts Are Showing Up! One protester wore a dinosaur suit. An inflatable Baby Trump in a diaper walked by.
My sister was upbeat. This was her third No Kings protest, and she thought the demonstrators and their signs were getting better and better. She said how good it felt to be surrounded by people she agreed with.
I get her optimism too. It was inspiring to join this historic demonstration, which is shaping up as the largest nationwide protest in U.S. history.
The atmosphere was raucous but not rancorous; peaceful, positive, civil.
Still, with all the bonhomie and esprit de corps, I couldn’t help but resent being there when I could have been with my family on the beach. Everyone else had something else they could be doing, instead of taking the time to protest the incompetence, recklessness and chaos of this administration.
If it’s true only 5% of people who feel the same way about something usually speak out, and if the No Kings turnout is really 8 million, as is being reported, the protesters represented 160 million people.
I’m proud to be part of it. Still, I protest having to protest. And to be accused of taking money for my grudging altruism and patriotism is a low blow indeed.
Fred Fiske, a retired editorial writer from Syracuse, New York, is a winter resident of Fort Pierce
AI? Here’s to reading certain kinds of letters
In a recent column, Larry Reisman mentioned that one of his readers suggested that perhaps all letters to the editor should be reviewed for potential use of artificial intelligence.
Though I’ve never used AI to compose anything, nor would I even know how to do this, I suppose this task could be performed by running each letter though an AI-checking program. While not entirely without merit, I don’t think it is really necessary nor a worthwhile use of the letters editor’s time.
It seems to me that it’s not unimaginable that multiple people could have the same thoughts and even express themselves similarly. Certainly, it should not be assumed that AI can detect all instances of plagiarism or appropriation. Likewise, it should not be assumed that AI is accurate in all of its assessments.
Why anyone would resort to using AI to write a simple letter to the editor perplexes me. It seems to me that if any of the opinion letters submitted to the editor need closer review, it’s the longwinded letters that include arcane references and unprofessional psychological analysis. Not the letters from the heart.
Handling those would be a better use of the editor’s time.
Julie Eisdorfer, Vero Beach
Florida junior senator can help on Alzheimer’s
In Florida, 580,000 people are living with Alzheimer’s, yet most are not identified early enough to benefit from today’s treatments.
Thankfully, U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody can play an important role in ensuring people in Florida and across the country can benefit from early detection of Alzheimer’s. The bipartisan ASAP Act creates a pathway for Medicare coverage of U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved blood tests that detect Alzheimer’s biomarkers — tests that provide a simpler, more scalable approach than previous diagnostic pathways.
This is a “mammogram moment” for Alzheimer’s — just as Congress enabled Medicare to cover routine mammograms, leading to earlier detection and declining breast cancer deaths, Congress can deliver the same breakthrough moment for Alzheimer’s.
After being my uncle’s caregiver for many years, I realized how critical early detection is and that it can make a huge difference in the path forward.
Please join me and the Alzheimer’s Association in encouraging Sen. Moody to support the bipartisan Alzheimer’s Screening and Prevention Act. To learn more about this disease and how you can join the fight to end Alzheimer’s, visit alz.org.
Nancy Ginden, Palm City
Florida founded after political fight
Recently, President Donald Trump acknowledged the Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus.
I doubt he and others understand the logical relationship between Florida, Columbus and Juan Ponce de León.
Let me help. Columbus opened the door to the Americas, but men like Ponce de León walked through it.
Point of fact, their relationship reveals that the Age of Discovery was driven by political rivalry as well as exploration.
Ponce de León began his career in Columbus’s shadow, serving as a subordinate on the admiral’s second voyage in 1493. However, as discovery turned to settlement, the relationship soured — not with Christopher Columbus, but with his son, Diego.
After Ponce successfully colonized Puerto Rico, Diego Columbus sued the Spanish Crown to reclaim his father’s hereditary rights over all “discovered” land. Diego won in 1511, effectively ousting Ponce from power.
This political defeat forced Ponce farther north. In 1513, he landed in Florida — naming it La Florida during the Easter season — becoming the first to push Spanish influence into the North American mainland.
While Columbus mapped the route, Ponce proved the New World was far larger and more politically complex than his father imagined.
Both men were architects of a brutal colonial transformation. Driven by “God, Gold, and Glory,” their arrivals brought the mission systems and the Spanish Empire to the forefront, but also signaled the end for many Indigenous populations through disease and warfare.
This era of Spanish dominance lasted centuries, ending only in 1821, when Spain ceded Florida to United States.
Ultimately, the map of North America exists partly because of a messy legal dispute between the Columbus dynasty and the Spanish men who followed in their wake.
While they are grouped together today as symbols of the Spanish Empire, they were fierce rivals whose friction expanded the boundaries of the known world.
Derek Boyd Hankerson, Fort Pierce
When was real birth of a nation?
“When a land transgresses, it has many rulers, but with men and women of understanding and knowledge its stability will long continue,” says Proverbs 28:2 in the Old Testament.
When the Pilgrims came to this country in 1620, they entered into a Mayflower Compact, a covenant between this country and God Almighty, El Shaddai in Hebrew. A covenant somewhat similar to the one Israel made with El Shaddai.
The Mayflower Compact was an agreement that combined religious dedication to morality enunciated in the Bible with the establishment of a civil body politic for self-government. Ultimately, this desire by the Pilgrims to be useful to God resulted in a United States independent of England.
In 2021 Nikole Hannah-Jones published “The 1619 Project” that considered slaves brought to the settlement of Jamestown in 1619 by an English privateer ship, the White Lion, as the real birth of this nation.
“How might that reframing change,” she writes, “how we understand the unique problems of the nation today — its stark economic inequality, its violence, its world-leading incarceration rates, its shocking segregation, its political divisions, its stingy social safety net.”
This kind of mentality supported and promoted by The New York Times, which published the book, does much damage to a unifying of our country. If we are so bad, why do immigrants flock here? Because most other countries are worse than ours.
Slavery is terrible. But our country lost an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 of its people fighting a civil war so, as President Abraham Lincoln stated at Gettysburg, “that we here highly resolved that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”
Stanford Erickson, Vero Beach
Stop nonsense, invoke 25th amendment
Seriously, folks, its time we invoke the 25th amendment.
Anyone who’s listened to the president speak lately must realize they’re listening to a man who is losing his mental capabilities. His mentation is only going to continue deteriorating. It never reverts to an improved train of thought.
Many thousands of lives have already been lost due to his incompetent decision making and the possibility of many thousands more people’s lives currently hang in the balance. These are human beings we’re talking about. Whether they are the same religion as us, or have a different set of beliefs is immaterial. Killing any other people is wrong.
And, quite often, these decisions to kill people are based on economics. And killing 70,000 or more people due to their radical enemies murdering 1,200 of their people is also not justified in my opinion. Or decimating their cities.
The decision to invoke the 25th amendment should be bipartisan. This is our country we’re talking about and real human lives. This is not simply a game of Risk using game pieces.
I’m praying hard for all people of this world right now. Let’s do the right thing, in His name.
Tim Conboy, Stuart
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This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Martin school teacher Charlie Kirk case victim. Can chief. | Opinion
Reporting by Letter writers, Treasure Coast Newspapers / Treasure Coast Newspapers
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