Stout was at Tuesday's Laurinburg Rotary Club lunch to explain why he wants to reduce the number of academies at the high school from six to four.
"We all sat together and we tried to figure out what the best approach to Scotland High School would be," he said. "Because we had so many schools, we had a lot of areas where the responsibility was in question as far as who was in charge, for example in athletics, in-school suspension, and making sure policies were being followed."
Under this new construction, students will also have more flexibility in their elective classes, Stout said.
"We're going to open up our electives among the four schools, we're going to break down some barriers. The schools we have now are very isolated and there isn't much flexibility as far as electives go," Stout said. "We're going to allow crossovers, that didn't happen in the past."
Under the current system, Stout said that many parents and student complained about how a student could not take classes that were offered in other schools, and ended up taking the class online even though a teacher and seat was available.
Stout also said the plan would allow students in a specific school priority placement in classes in their school, but if there are any open seats after registration, a student from another school will be able to take the class.
"I want to eliminate the number of students taking a class on the computer if there is a teacher and seat available in a class," he said.
Stout said that the elimination of the Ninth Grade Academy was a concern, but there would be no way he would recommend taking away the Ninth Grade Academy if the high school was going into the traditional setting of having more than 1,800 students in one school.
"We're going to eliminate the transition. One principal will now become accountable for a student from the time they enter ninth grade until the time they graduate. The nice thing about this will be that principal will be able to work with a student if they have trouble in the school immediately, instead of having to go through the process twice in ninth and tenth grade," he said.
According to Stout, eliminating the Ninth Grade Academy will give the administration a better opportunity to look at the elective process, monitor classes more closely, and provide students two chances to transfer to other schools, once at the end of ninth grade, and once a the end of tenth grade.
In an attempt to increase the financial literacy of the students, Stout said the high school will be adding classes, many finance related, which will be available to all students in all four schools as elective credit.
"Children are graduating without knowing how to balance their own checkbooks or know what a checkbook is or what a debit card is, or a credit card. We're going to increase our financial literacy by putting business in each of those four schools. So when they come out they have a better understanding of their financial situation and will know better how to handle their finances, which will be very helpful even if they don't go onto attend a college," he said.
One of these classes, Finance Academy, under the School of Leadership and Public Service, will involve community bankers and a board of directors to talk to students about filling out their FAFSA, and other financial forms for a better knowledge and understanding about real world finance.
The four schools will offer all the core classes required by the state, and approximately 450 students will be in any one school.
Based on the schools currently, some classes have only eight or nine students, according to Stout. However, once the schools are decreased to four, the class size will increase.
"We need to do that because the state is not giving us enough money to keep classes so small. Having such small classes may be the ideal situation, but financial is not feasible," he said.
"We've narrowed down the four schools, but we've really opened the doors for a lot of students who were not allowed to take certain electives because they were in certain schools. We're tweaking the whole project to make it best for the students of Scotland High School," he added.
Stout said he planned to make similar presentation to various groups in the community.
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