City in a lather over Brooklyn teacher selling soap to students

Baby, what the hell is going on with this thang right here? Huh? What, what, what? A Brooklyn teacher has been punished for a dirty deed — selling his students bars of soap in exchange for a free pass on homework. Marlon Scanterbury came clean to city investigators and agreed to pay a $4,000 fine for his scheme, which apparently netted him all of 25 bucks.

Scanterbury, who earns about $81,000, got in trouble for using a good-behavior incentive program at Canarsie’s Public School 66 to line his own pockets.

Under the program, teachers promoted good behavior and academics by giving out keys to deserving students, who could then redeem them for trinkets. Scanterbury put his own twist on it, telling his 11- and 12-year-old students last November that they would earn 10 keys if they bought a bar of homemade soap for $3 or $4.

That sales pitch apparently didn’t work too well, because two months later, the school system’s version of Willy Loman sweetened the deal.

“I further informed my students that for each bar of soap purchased, in addition to 10 ‘keys,’ the student would also receive one ‘no homework pass,’” he said in a signed statement. The city Conflicts of Interest Board found that at least three students bought one bar of soap; one particularly good customer bought three bars.

One no-homework pass was issued before Scanterbury, 43, was busted.

The teacher, who began as a substitute in 1998, hasn’t been bounced from the school for his soap-peddling. He was reprimanded in 2008 for corporal punishment. At P.S. 66, parents and students weren’t in too much a lather about Scanterbury’s salesmanship.

“I guess it teaches kids to be hygienic,” said Crystal Pierre, 20, a college student who was picking up her cousins. “But school is not the place.”

Kenicia Castillo, 13, had Scanterbury for science two years ago — and was never offered any soap.
“He was a nice teacher,” she said. “He's fun.”

Scanterbury did not return a message left at his home.