GREEN ISLAND, Hanover —The National Parent-Teacher Association of Jamaica (NPTAJ) has flatly rejected a suggestion, from the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA), for Government to withhold Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH) benefits from parents who do not regularly attend PTA meetings. While the call, made by JTA President LaSonja Harrison, has received support from other quarters, NPTAJ President Stewart Jacobs described it as discriminatory.

“To hold it over PATH parents that if you’re on PATH then you must come to the PTA meeting, that is not something that the NPTAJ will support — and I would say that publicly,” Jacobs told the Jamaica Observer Tuesday.

“It is discriminatory to some degree, and not everybody wants everybody to know that they are on PATH… So are you saying to me [that] what you’re going to do is stigmatise a PTA meeting now?… And so the students of those parents are going to feel a way,” he argued, his voice heavy with annoyance.