After another period of neglect in the late 1980s after the decade long stimulating and long leadership of the "New City College" program, curriculum and admissions standards under Principal Solomon Lausch, by the early 1990s, to the mid-1990s, with an increase in funding from the BCPS school system, and the selection of the high school to be one of the few to sub-contract out its maintenance and support functions to the Educational Alternatives, Inc. private system (E.A.I.) who were already academically operating and running several other city elementary and middle schools under an experimental but controversial contract with the BCPS and the School Board. The B.C.C. began to experience a turnaround under new principal and former attorney, Dr. Joseph Wilson brought in during 1994 after a nationwide job search. Administrators re-strengthened academic standards and, in 1998, the school began offering the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program. By the beginning of the decade of the 2000s, City College was experiencing an academic resurgence. During this period the school was recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as a National Blue Ribbon School, was listed as one of the top high schools in the United States by "Newsweek" magazine.