Roland Park Country School all-girls school summer reading, library, and book talks all based in DEI ideology

Roland Park Country School, an all-girls independent K-12 school founded in 1894 in the historic Roland Park neighborhood of Baltimore, started back to school with summer reading assignments due Sept. 6. The school’s summer reading, library resources, and speaker events are steeped in “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), including critical race theory and gender ideology.

Roland Park Country School upper school tuition for the 2022-23 school year is $35,900. The school is affiliated with the National Association of Independent Schools, a schools association widely criticized for pushing ideological content on its members. 

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Of the 11 summer reading texts assigned across nine classes and four grade levels, there was only one classic novel assigned. The other 10 texts were all written in the last 20 years, most centered on identity/critical theory topics, and several were “social justice book” program recommendations from the far-left Teaching for Change activist organization, which is affiliated with Black Lives Matter at School and the Zinn Education Project.

Class	Text	Year published
English 9	Escape from Aleppo (Teaching for Change)	2020
English 9H	Escape from Aleppo (Teaching for Change)	2020
English 9H	Poet X (Teaching for Change)	2018
English 10	Purple Hibiscus	2003
English 10H	Purple Hibiscus	2003
English 10H	Trick Mirror	2019
English 11	Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Teaching for Change)	2012
Honors Research Seminar:  Profiles in Leadership	Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup	2018
Honors Research Seminar: Telling African Stories	Homegoing	2016
Disabilities in Literature	The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time	2003
AP English Literature and Composition:	Pride and Prejudice	1813

Rainbow library

Roland Park Country School participates in the “Rainbow Library” program, an effort of the trans rights activist group GLSEN to send free “LGBTQ+ affirming K-12 text sets” to schools nationwide. According to GLSEN’s website, the organization has sent 12-book sets to over 800 schools, with another 800 institutions still on their waiting list. GLSEN launched the program in 2019. 

Roland Park Country School’s “Rainbow Library” webpage includes resources from trans rights activist groups GLSEN, Planned Parenthood, PFLAG Maryland, Pride Center Maryland, SMYAL, and The Trevor Project.

The school’s libary webpage lists dozens of books on transgender topics available in both the lower school and upper school libraries.

Julián Is a Mermaid is available in the lower school library.

Gender Queer is listed in the school’s YA collection. Gender Queer includes graphic illustrations of sex acts.

Library webpage:

“Diversity, equity, and inclusion” DEI ideology

Roland Park Country School’s “rainbow library” is part of the school’s broader “diversity, equity, and inclusion” efforts. The school was one of the first K-12s in the nation to establish a DEI program (in 1989). On Oct. 13, 2022, Roland Park Country School has plans to host a “community discussion” with author Heather McGhee about her book The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. McGhee is a critical race theorist, a former president of far-left think tank Demos, and a 2019 Pritzker fellow.