Is he or is he not? Apparently, Will Smith is NOT a Scientologist. Did he and his wife Jada Pinkett-Smith open a scientology school in 2008? Apparently, New Village Leadership Academy was NOT a Scientology school. Are the reports of the couple disassociating themselves from the Church Of Scientology and in the process receiving a $1.2 million refund from the church, true? Well, if the answers to the first two questions are ‘apparently’ in negative, the answer to the third question, obviously, can’t be in affirmative.
Recently, nearly every media outlet quoted Radar Online to report that Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith parted ways with the Church of Scientology, and in the process received a $1.2 million refund from the Church. Inquisitr wrote that NVLA’s tax documents showed that the Smiths donated $1,235,000 to New Village Leadership Academy from the WJS Trust and not from Smith’s publicly scrutinized foundation, which donated a total of $1,275,699 in his total charitable donations for 2008. The school closed in 2013, and the Will Smith Foundation was refunded the entire sum donated to the project.
The original source of this ‘revelation’– Radar – has, however, removed its story.
THE CONFUSING CASE OF $1.2 MILLION REFUND
The Underground Bunker has a counter revelation which every media outlet chose to ignore.
According to the school’s first principal, Jacqueline Olivier, the Smiths, through their WJS Trust, loaned the school $1.235 million to get it going and pay the first three years’ rent on a previously closed high school campus in Calabasas. That seed money, combined with what the school could bring in through tuition and fundraising, the Smiths hoped, was aimed at making it self-sufficient after 2011. After the initial three years that they had financed, the Smiths distanced themselves from the project, and the school struggled to raise enough money to keep going.
The school’s 2011 tax return showed that it was operating in the red with a balance of –$284,931. By June 2013, it was clear the school couldn’t go on. The tax return for that year describes how the school was shutting down and doing its best to leave no debts. Since the school was opened in 2008, its tax records had carried the initial $1,235,000 loan from the Smiths’ WJS Trust as a liability, a “payable to current and former officer”. The $1,235,000 liability was zeroed out in the 2013 tax return, but Radar Online interpreted it to mean that New Village Leadership Academy, despite being broke and closing down, somehow came up with $1.2 million to pay the Smiths for the seed money that had gotten the school going.
The Underground Bunker’s analysis claims the loan was not ‘refunded’. $1,196,628 was forgiven as a contribution to the school so the school’s tax-exempt organization books could be zeroed-out and closed. The most the Smiths might have received toward their loan was about $65,000 that was left in cash at the end of the final school year.
WAS NVLA A SCIENTOLOGY SCHOOL?
New Village Leadership Academy made use of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s “study technology”, which is a part of what every church member must learn, apart from other educational methodologies including Montessori, Gardner, and Jerome Bruner. Subjects included in the school’s curriculum include mathematics, literacy, Spanish, karate, yoga, robotics, technology, etiquette, art, and living skills.
In 2008, Olivier denied that the school had a religious affiliation, and in 2008 told the Los Angeles Times, “People tend to think Study Technology is a subject, but it is really just the way the subject is taught. They then come to the conclusion that we are teaching Scientology when actually a methodology doesn’t have anything to do with content.”
In 2009, Olivier, who claimed NVLA was a secular school, was fired and was replaced by Piano Foster, an educator with Scientology associations. While The New York Post reported that Olivier left the school, due to conflicts with the Smiths over the Scientology teaching methodologies, the Smiths maintained the school had no religious affiliation.
Jada Pinkett-Smith, in an interview with NPR, tried to point out how the school was not a Scientology school. “I definitely want to make it very clear to everybody that the educational institution that we have, the school that Will and I have, is not a Scientology school … it is not a desire of ours to educate children with Scientology, that is not what Will and I want to do. And our school is not, and I repeat, not a Scientology school.”
I’M NOT A SCIENTOLOGIST: WILL SMITH
At the premiere of “Lakeview Terrace” in 2008, when a Fox News reporter asked Will Smith if he was a Scientologist, he said, “I am not. The school is using one of Scientology’s teaching tools, but you can take different parts of things you like and put them all together.”
“I was introduced, to Scientology by Tom Cruise and I’m a student of world religion. I was raised in a Baptist household, I went to a Catholic school, but the ideas of the Bible are 98% the same ideas of Scientology, 98% the same ideas of Hinduism and Buddhism,” he had said in 2007.
Inquisitr also added that after disassociating themselves from Scientology, the couple only donated to Christian and Baptist Churches in California, Los Angeles, and Baltimore. He may have donated to Scientology-centered organizations earlier, and he may have stopped doing it at present; but how does it make or not make him a Scientologist? Will Smith recently donated $150,000 to the October 10 Nation of Islam rally titled “Justice or Else” in Washington DC. Does the act make him a follower of Islam?
SO…
Apparently, the $1.2 million refund never happened; and the couple never left Scientology – because it is next to impossible for people to leave a religion they never followed.
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