CLEARWATER, Fla. It was a weekday afternoon here in early December, and a gaggle of kids outside of Clearwater Academy International were playing with a ball, their laughter and shouts filling the air. The school is just a few blocks away from the spiritual headquarters for the Church of Scientology, and church volunteers appeared to be preparing for an event.

Garrett Cantrell, who is not a Scientologist, recalled his time at the school as he sat near Clearwaters harbor, surrounded by Scientologist retreat centers. The school was small and private, exactly what Cantrell was seeking in a high school after moving to Florida from New York in 2008.

He and his family, as they toured the school, had asked about its religious affiliations before he enrolled, specifically wanting to make sure it wasnt associated with Scientology. An employee told them, no. But a few months into the school year, Cantrell decided the answer was not so clear cut.

Clearwater Academy International is one of dozens of schools and tutoring centers in the U.S. that use learning materials based on the ideas of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the church of Scientology. Five of these schools and tutoring centers, including Clearwater Academy, receive public funding through voucher or tax credit scholarship programs, HuffPost has found.

While Cantrell said he was never asked to participate in Scientologist events, he realized that most of his classmates were deeply involved in the church participating in events like an off-campus party for Hubbards birthday.

After a few months at the school, Cantrell decided he wanted out and he spent the rest of the year slacking off. School leaders eventually asked him to leave for which Cantrell was grateful.

I dont feel like I learned anything there other than that basically Scientology was obviously not something that I wanted to do, said Cantrell, now 25 years old.

Clearwater Academy is a private institution, which means that in general, the school can teach what it likes with little oversight. But the learning materials it uses raise questions about its links to the Church of Scientology, in light of the school receiving more than $500,000 in taxpayer money for student scholarships between 2012-2016.

HuffPost has been investigating the schools that receive such money for students, which comes via state-level voucher or tax credit programs.

Over the course of our investigation, we created a database of over 7,000 schools in the country that participate in these programs and researched what each was teaching. Our first story , published earlier this month, broke down how many religious schools were receiving such funds and dove deep into the curriculums often used in evangelical Christian schools.

But we also came across Clearwater Academy and the four other schools and tutoring centers that use curriculum by Applied Scholastics , a non-profit that says it is non-religious but is dedicated to spreading educational methods developed by Hubbard.