Reader Writes: 'Justin-Siena Development Plan Teaches Wrong Lesson'

The way the leadership of Justin-Siena has approached its desire to build a strip mall on its property has set up a situation where if one opposes the project, one also opposes educating our youth.

Opposition to the project has nothing to do with the education of our youth. And to proceed with the project as proposed without considering the broader needs of the neighborhood or community, we might begin to think about the important life and leadership lessons the approach by the school’s leadership models for its students and future leaders they hope to educate.

By considering only the needs of the school and its future viability rather than the needs of the broader community it serves, the school leadership is modeling that the students should think only of their individual needs and not the needs of others. By failing to reach out to the local community during the planning process, the school leadership modeled to students that it’s not important to seek and incorporate input from other stakeholders or to create alignment across these same stakeholders.

By hiring a PR firm to manage communications and support the approval process, the school leadership is modeling that it is more important to win than to step back and reassess based on important new information. By completing a traffic study during the summer months when there is much less traffic, the school leadership modeled that it is important to make the facts of a situation appear to align with your own interests. By suggesting that there is only one way to look at this and creating a “you are for or against us” approach, this models that there is only one way to view a situation and that pitting groups of people against each other is OK.

These are just some of the potential lessons being modeled and taught by the school’s leadership to its students. Great leaders are stewards of more than their own self interests. They think of the broader community and serve a higher purpose. And we can probably all agree that finding a viable solution to the costs of educating our youth is very important.

Unfortunately, the process that Justin-Siena’s leadership has used to get to this point has lacked effective stewardship and basic integrity -- lessons we hope its students will not learn.

The result may be that an ill-conceived project gets funded because people get convinced that it’s the only way to ensure the long-term viability of the school and education for many of Napa’s students. We should worry about what is the ultimate lesson that this teaches our students and future leaders. Hopefully the Napa City Council and other planners will consider the broader community and higher purpose they serve in their decision making and reject this ill-conceived proposal.

Jonathan Gottlieb

Napa

Published in the Napa Valley Register March 30, 2015

FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO SIGN THE PETITION TO THE CITY COUNCIL VISIT WWW.STOPJUSTINSIENA.COM