Why is the local school called
New Pitsligo and St. John's?

New Pitsligo was the estate of Sir William Forbes who endowed the Episcopal chapel, was patron of the established kirk, and set up an Episcopal school which came to be within a minute's walk of an education authority school, and which had relatively few Episcopal children in it.

It was hardly surprising that the Aberdeen Education Authority decided that, instead of the two schools duplicating each other's work, the Episcopal one should take all the children for four years, after which they should go to the board school. The matter went to the Court of Session, which upheld the decision in 1923, but on appeal to the Inner House of the Court of Session, this was overturned.

In fact victory was won at a great price; one of the judges said that he could not see what damage the change made to the Episcopalians, but they were entitled to their pound of flesh, while the change was "eminently desirable", the two schools being so close.
But the Episcopal school had only four teachers for 157 pupils, so each teacher had more than one class, which was educationally undesirable. Then the headmaster resigned, and the authority could not find another Episcopalian for the job, while the upgrading of the authority school could only go ahead if they had more pupils.

In 1938 both schools were replaced by a new building with four of the ten classrooms being "Episcopal", joined to the others by a corridor and named "New Pitsligo and St. John's" school.