I promise to never again use the acronym in the title above. As many readers know, Scot is heading out of the country for much of the Summer, kicking off a bicycle tour beginning in Portugal. I leave for Lisbon on the Jet Blue red-eye to JFK leaving midnight tonight. I’ll be posting here at BB… Read More Better Burque Flee the Country Trip (BBFtCT) 2017: Pre-boarding

Prologue: The “Revised MEMO” below is from Albuquerque Public Schools’ Associate Superintendent Lucinda Sanchez in response to recent inquiries as to how Gifted Education in The District may be “reorganized” due to both budget cutbacks and perceived best practices going forward.  In an email reply to my inquiries on the subject, Ms. Sanchez passes along to,… Read More Update on APS “Reorganization” of Gifted Education: A 5.24.17 Memo

  This morning’s Journal has veritable Santa Claus Hanna Skandera dropping gifts down the budgetary chimney to the tune of a 1.8 percent rise in “State Equalization Guarantee,” the school funding per-pupil unit formula. In the story, Skandera turns from Santa to scolding Scrooge in a fascinating little comment regarding Albuquerque Public Schools having budgeted… Read More Hanna Skandera: Master of Passive-Aggressive Gift Giving

Not too long after getting my driver’s license in 1977, or maybe even a bit before, my father entrusted me with perhaps the single sexiest vehicle in automotive history. It looked almost identical to this: The “wood-paneled,” “station wagon” Vega was just one of a melange of not-so-great vehicles my dad rotated through, seemingly because… Read More Burning Down the Chevy Vega

Note: This Week in “Better Burque does Duke City Fix” we look at an old professional wound that continues to fester… Before I started bothering people here at Duke City Fix and elsewhere in that greatest of roles for people who wish to be bothersome, the “semi-retired person,” I was a full-time professional bother as… Read More When APS Says “Reorganize,” Watch Out: The District and Gifted Education

After a truly carnage-filled 2016, New Mexico traffic fatalities in 2017 continue to hover somewhere between the record high of last year and the increasingly apparent outlier low of 2015. Here are the monthly figures through April: While the overall numbers this year are significantly down from last year, the rate of pedestrians killed in New Mexico… Read More Observations From the April 2017 Traffic Fatality Report