In the mid-to-late 1980s families began moving into Bellaire and Meyerland. They would tear down many older houses and build new ones. This gave Bellaire High School a population of wealthier students. At the same time apartments formerly housing White singles began to house low income immigrants. Bellaire added Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs to encourage White parents to send their children to Bellaire. Parents strove to get their children into the classes. Mimi Swartz of the "Texas Monthly" said "But these outstanding academic programs created, over time, a school within a school, in which the smartest kids with the most advantages took the IB and AP tracks, while everyone else was relegated to classes that, for various reasons--discipline problems, less talented teachers, lower standards--just weren't as good."