UPDATE: The website for the school, which taught around 70 kids, is gone. NVLA is now like the lost city of Xenu.
EARLIER: New Village Leadership Academy is no more. This was the private school stared by Will Smith and wife Jada Pinkett Smith in 2008 with ties to Scientology. The intrepid Tony Ortega reported on his site www.tonyortega.org on Wednesday that he’d confirmed with several sources attached to the school that the Calabasas, California organization was kaput.
This must be a blow to the Smiths, especially with “After Earth” bombing at the box office.
Though the school may be closed, their website is still up. According to GuideStar.org, the non profit institution still has no Form 990 filed for 2012 But their 2011 filing shows that school chief Franca Campopiano, an avowed Scientologist, was making $200,000 a year. On website whyweprotest.com, an anonymous former parent wrote in: “This horrific institution has CLOSED! The star founders should be ashamed of the lies propagated by the unethical staff.”
Recently I reported that John Travolta had donated money to the school as a fellow Scientologist, from the charitable fund he started in his son Jett’s memory.
Because New Village still has not filed for 2012, it’s hard to say what their financial situation was. But in 2011, they claimed net assets of negative $284,931 and liabilities of $1,235,154.
The school ran from Kindergarten to 6th grade. If anyone has more info, please email me at roger@showbiz411.com. We’ll try and figure out where all the money went.
The shut down must have been sudden. Back on April 29th, New Village ran a week long fundraising auction on Ebay. Some of the items included Will Smith’s suit from “Men in Black,” a Yamaha motorcycle owned by Jada, and a training session with Sugar Ray Leonard.
