A former Battle Creek Middle School teacher has filed a federal lawsuit claiming she was the victim of harassment and physical assaults by students, but school administrators did nothing to stop it and she was later fired.

Peggy Anne Severs’ suit against St. Paul Public Schools and then-principal Tyrone Brookins claims First Amendment retaliation, discrimination, unlawful reprisal and a violation of the Minnesota Whistleblower Law.

Severs claims she “suffered gender-based and sexually-motivated physical and verbal abuse from students in her classroom,” starting shortly after she was hired in November 2013 as a special education teacher, her suit said. She was punched, kicked and kneed by students on several occasions and endured regular verbal harassment that was vulgar and sexual in nature, the suit said.

Though Severs claims incidents dating to the 2013-14 school year, her lawsuit includes only those alleged to have occurred during the 2014-2015 school year, during Brookins’ time as principal. Brookins is no longer at Battle Creek.

“It’s a couple things: One, that the seriousness of the incidents started to increase, they were worse in the second year,” Severs’ Minneapolis-based attorney T.J. Conley said Friday. “And there’s a statute of limitations issue. That’s not to say the stuff that happened in the first year wasn’t important. And I think she was more frustrated with the principal during her second year.”

St. Paul’s middle schools had significant behavioral problems in 2013-14 — the year Severs began teaching at Battle Creek.

That’s the year the school district moved large numbers of emotionally and behaviorally disturbed students to mainstream classrooms and switched from grade 7-8 junior high schools to grade 6-8 middle schools.

Lisa Sayles-Adams, an assistant superintendent who was Battle Creek’s principal in 2013-14, has said the start of the school year was hectic but student behavior at Battle Creek improved by spring 2014.

Battle Creek that year adopted a school climate strategy that set schoolwide expectations, stressed positive relationships and provided tiered systems of support for students who acted out.

During 2013-14, 7 percent of Battle Creek students were suspended at least once. School-level discipline data was not available Friday for the 2014-15 school year.

Police records show Severs filed one police report in February 2014 related to an assault at the school.

In her lawsuit, Severs claims she filed written and verbal incident reports to Principal Brookins, asking that something be done “to intervene and stop the harassment and abuse.”

“Defendants had the authority to stop the harassment, but they did nothing to help her,” the lawsuit said. “Instead, on or about Sept. 21, 2014, Brookins chastised (Severs) for submitting too many referral forms, and directed her to stop preparing them. To make matters worse, in the fall of 2014, defendants removed the telephone from plaintiff’s classroom, making it impossible for her to seek immediate assistance when she was being abused or harassed.”

Severs also claims school administrators didn’t follow federal requirements for children with disabilities and “reported that defendants were violating (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) and harming students by failing to conduct IEP (Individual Education Plan) meetings, and by assigning disabled students to classes in which they did not belong,” her suit said.

The day after a February 2015 meeting with Brookins regarding her complaints, Severs was placed on involuntary leave “pending further investigation of allegations of serious misconduct,” according to the lawsuit. The misconduct was not specified.

“On March 9, 2015, plaintiff was permitted to resume working without any finding of misconduct having been made, or any discipline imposed,” the suit said. “However, on (Severs’) return, Brookins belittled her by requiring that she begin each statement during meetings with the preamble, ‘As a white woman I feel…’ ”

Severs claims that on May 14 she walked out of her classroom “in fear for her safety” because students were repeatedly pushing a table into her and being verbally abusive. She reportedly went to Brookins’ office and told him “she could not tolerate the unsafe working conditions, that she refused to work under such conditions and that she needed to leave for the day,” the suit said.

“Later that same day, Brookins notified plaintiff that defendants were terminating her employment immediately,” Severs’ lawsuit said.

Severs’ attorney said incidents of violence at Battle Creek “were far too common” and not limited to Severs, who he said is an experienced special education teacher with a master’s degree.

“I don’t think she had an experience like this anywhere before (Battle Creek),” Conley said. “It seemed to be worse with her, I think, because she was a woman. She was treated more harshly than some of her male counterparts and paraprofessionals.”

Conley said the timing of Severs’ lawsuit isn’t directly related to the public conversation about violence in St. Paul schools. “But obviously it is part of the larger discussion,” he said. “My fear is that it’s going on in a lot of classrooms and affecting a lot of kids and teachers.”

“That’s really the shame of this whole thing, is that it’s the kids being hurt by all this,” Conley said.

“If a teacher doesn’t feel safe in a classroom, you can imagine what kind of education (the students) are getting, even the kids who are acting out. I suppose if there were certain protocols in place, the environment could be improved.”

A spokesperson for the school district declined comment, citing active litigation.

The district also denied a Pioneer Press request for documentation of Severs’ alleged reports, emails related to the alleged incidents and documentation related to her leave of absence and the termination of her employment.

The district provided verification of Severs’ dates of employment.

“The rest of this is private data, according to our legal department,” district spokeswoman Toya Stewart Downey said in an email.

Brookins could not be reached for comment Friday.

Josh Verges contributed to this report.