School Probe Yields Little in 5 Weeks : Investigation: Police report ‘no major revelations’ on abuse charges. Parents and faculty of private facility in South Pasadena say the inquiry is taking too long.

An investigation into allegations of misconduct by staff members at a small private school in South Pasadena has uncovered “no major revelations” of abuse, although the inquiry will not be finished until the end of this week, authorities said Wednesday.

“Right now there haven’t been any significant developments,” said South Pasadena Police Chief Thomas E. Mahoney. “No one thing has led us to something else.”

Mahoney said it was too early to know if any of the 11 staff members at Stancliff School could face criminal prosecution, but none have been arrested and the school has remained open since police launched the investigation five weeks ago.

“We do not know what the district attorney will do until we submit our report,” he said. “(But) there has been no development so far that we were not perhaps expecting.”

School officials and parents, many of whom have complained that the inquiry is taking too long, said they look forward to its conclusion.

“We parents have been putting a great deal of pressure on them to wrap this up and either make a decision (to press charges) or not,” said Mary Smart, who has two daughters at the school. “They need to squelch the rumor mill and undo the damage they have done.”

Since serving a search warrant and confiscating files and computer disks on the afternoon of Jan. 27, authorities have remained tight-lipped about the nature of the allegations, saying only that the inquiry involved multiple victims and suspects. Mahoney said Wednesday the investigation has focused on disciplinary measures at the 132-student school, which has a small campus on Arroyo Verde Road for kindergarten through eighth grade.

“The primary reason we went there was because we were concerned with the way disciplinary measures were applied to children at the school,” he said. “It was relative to discipline and corporal punishment.”

Principal Judith Thayer said Wednesday that the school has not used corporal punishment for about eight years, dropping the use of wooden paddles “because the times have changed.” The school does require some unruly students to perform physical exercises as punishment, she said, including pushups and running laps around the campus.

Parents and school officials said investigators have been asking about two incidents involving Andrew Thayer, who is the principal’s son and the school’s physical education teacher and football coach. In one incident, Andrew Thayer and several students apparently placed a football player in a trash dumpster, and in another, Andrew Thayer placed a boy’s feet and lower legs in an ice machine.

Judith Thayer said both of the incidents were meant in fun, one following a football victory and the other on a hot summer day. She said neither incident was intended as a form of discipline. Thayer said her son has temporarily stopped working at the school since the investigation began because “he has been overwhelmed by all of this.”