The Redlands Unified School District has agreed to settle three sex abuse lawsuits involving eight former students for $15.7 million, the attorney for the plaintiffs said Monday.

The settlement marks perhaps the largest award in sex abuse litigation in the history of the school district, which encompasses 147 square miles and has a student enrollment of more than 21,000 at its 16 elementary schools, four middle schools, three high schools, and one alternative high school. The district serves the communities of Redlands, Loma Linda, Mentone, Forest Falls, and portions of San Bernardino and Highland, according to its website.

All the plaintiffs in the litigation are former Redlands High School students. Six of them are the victims, or claim to have been the victims, of former special-education teacher and golf coach Kevin Patrick Kirkland, one alleges to be the victim of former English teacher Brian Townsley, and another alleges she was molested by former theater technical director Daniel Bachman.

One of Kirkland’s victims will receive more than $7 million, believed to be a record settlement for a single victim in a sex abuse lawsuit against a school district in the state, said attorney Morgan Stewart of the Irvine law firm Manly, Stewart & Finaldi, which represented the plaintiffs in the litigation.

The school district’s insurance carrier will cover the lion’s share of the settlement, and the district will pay $383,330, Redlands Unified School District officials say.

Stewart’s law firm also represented one of the victims of former Citrus Valley High School English teacher and soccer coach Laura Whitehurst, who bore the child of the then-student in June 2013. In August 2016 — three months after Kirkland’s arrest — the school district settled with Whitehurst’s victim for $6 million.

Whitehurst was convicted in July 2013 for sexually abusing three students and was sentenced to one year in jail. She was released from custody after serving six months.

Stewart alleges the school district has engaged in a culture of covering up sex abuse for more than a decade, failing to alert proper authorities to reported incidents of suspected sex abuse or inappropriate conduct by teachers and encouraging reporting students not to go to the police.

“The size of this settlement reflects the immense harm done to our clients and the continuing failure of the Redlands Unified School District to protect students from sexual predators,” Stewart said in a statement. He has called on the state and federal government to investigate the school district.

In a statement Monday, school district spokeswoman MaryRone Shell said, “We hope that this settlement provides a sense of closure and healing for the victims and enables our District to move forward. Regrettably, Redlands Unified is unable to erase the repugnant actions of these individuals.”

Shell said the district has sought out one of the nation’s leading child sexual abuse experts, Diane Cranley, to train staff on identifying the key warning signs that sexual predators exhibit toward their potential victims.

“We are imploring our staff, students and community to act promptly and report suspicious activities. As a District, we vow to act swiftly, with authority and purpose when it comes to incidences of abuse,” she said.

The settlement follows an 11-month investigation by the Southern California News Group into allegations that Redlands Unified officials repeatedly failed to properly report teachers accused of sexually abusing or having inappropriate relationships with students. A review of more than 2,000 pages of police reports, affidavits and depositions, along with 20 hours of recordings, also revealed that the school district obstructed the Whitehurst criminal investigation, and that assistant superintendent of human resources, Sabine Robertson-Phillips, might have destroyed evidence.

It was also learned that Redlands police failed to examine pornographic images of an underage student found on Kirkland’s phone, which were locked in a police evidence room for months and never submitted to the District Attorney’s Office until after Kirkland was convicted.

In February, Stewart sued the school district and former English teacher Brian Townsley, alleging he sexually abused a student in 2008 and 2009, when she was 15 and 16 years old. Although the girl denied having a relationship with Townsley when interviewed by a police officer, that was contrary to what other students told authorities. Townsley even admitted to police of being romantically involved with the girl, saying he felt they had a “future together.” But the District Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute Townsley, citing insufficient evidence.

In April, Stewart sued the district on behalf of a former student who alleged she was sexually abused by former theater technical director Daniel Bachman for three years — from 2011 to 2013 — beginning when the girl was 15 years old. The two allegedly had sex about 30 to 40 times while the girl was still a minor, including one time in the Redlands High theater.

According to police reports, Bachman admitted to the investigating detective he had had a sexual relationship with the girl, and that the two had “dated” from 2011 to 2013. He told police he and the girl had been dating about a year before they had sex. But despite Bachman’s admissions, the District Attorney’s Office did not charge Bachman, citing insufficient evidence.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Simon Umscheid said there were several overlapping issues, including Bachman’s lack of prior offenses and the fact his victim waited four years to come forward and report her allegations to police. She was 20 years old when she reported the relationship to police in 2015, and the statute of limitations to charge Bachman for the alleged crimes was three years, he said.

The most serious allegations were those against Kirkland, who in April 2017, under a plea bargain with prosecutors, pleaded guilty to eight felonies and three misdemeanors for sexually abusing four students from June 2014 through May 2016. He was released from custody two months later after serving 13 months behind bars.

But Kirkland, according to Stewart, is suspected of sexually abusing “dozens of students” during his employment with the school district, where he previously served as an assistant principal at Clement Middle School before transitioning to Redlands High School as a special-education teacher and golf coach.

One of Kirkland’s accusers alleges he sexually harassed her repeatedly in 2006 and 2007. Accompanied by her father, a retired Redlands police officer, she filed a written complaint with the school in the presence of then-Principal Christina Rivera, but nothing was ever done, the former student said in a sworn declaration.

Stewart said the school district never produced the former student’s written complaint. Rivera, who retired in August 2015, said in a sworn deposition she could not recall the incident.