Sandee Niblock was on the phone with her daughter, a freshman at Castle High School, and could hear other students chanting, telling her to “get off the f—ing bus.”

Niblock told her to stay on the school bus on campus where she would be safe. But she was not. Her daughter’s tormentor came aboard and beat her up, pounding her on the head and leaving her with a concussion, cuts and bruises, her mother said.

“Until this day I am absolutely furious,” Niblock said Friday, announcing the filing of a class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court along with other parents against schools Superintendent Christina Kishimoto and Department of Education employees.

The class-action complaint alleges that Hawaii’s public school administrators have systematically failed to protect students from bullying and harassment, leading to violent attacks. It accuses the department of “deliberate indifference” that “needlessly puts the entire student population at risk of significant and irreparable damage.”

Niblock’s daughter had told a counselor on the day of the attack, Aug. 30, 2016, that she had been threatened and feared for her safety. Another counselor was notified by telephone, but nothing was done to prevent the assault and her parents weren’t notified, according to the lawsuit. The beating, caught on video by other students, took place after school, before the driver boarded.

“I hear my daughter getting struck in the head, multiple times,” Niblock recalled. “I can hear my daughter scream, ‘Mommy, help me,’ at the top of her lungs, ‘Mommy, please help me.’”

Niblock and her husband, Gerald, are plaintiffs along with Marchet Denise Fullum, whose daughter attended Mililani Middle School, and Anna Grove, whose child went to Wailuku Elementary. Both kids say they were harassed to the point of physical harm in the last school year.

The parents are represented by attorney Eric Seitz, who led the charge in a class-action lawsuit decades ago that resulted in sweeping changes in special education in Hawaii under a federal consent decree.

The current suit seeks to represent thousands of students who have been harassed or bullied in school, on the way to or from school, or at school-sponsored off-campus functions.

Along with damages and other relief, the lawsuit calls for appointment of a special master to take over the Department of Education to ensure children’s safety.

“It’s not difficult for them to put resources in place to deal with these situations and take action to defuse them,” Seitz said. “From the standpoint of the horrendous incidents we’ve seen, I don’t understand why this isn’t a priority.”

Department of Education spokesman Derek Inoshita declined to comment on how the department handles bullying and harassment in general, or more specifically to address the allegations in the lawsuit.

“Unfortunately, we can’t comment or provide any specific details due to the pending litigation,” he said.

The filing comes as the department is under pressure to comply with federal policy in responding to harassment based on race, sex and disability, as part of a resolution agreement signed in December with the federal Office of Civil Rights.

Federal investigators found serious failings in how Hawaii’s public school administrators handle such problems, in a compliance review launched in 2011. They noted that the disciplinary code, which prohibits bullying and harassment, fails to “provide a complaint process for student victims and instead only provides a disciplinary process for students who commit harassment.”

Federal authorities faulted the state for not providing sufficient coordinators to handle civil rights complaints, disseminating notices of nondiscrimination or providing appropriate procedures to ensure prompt and equitable resolution of student complaints.

School officials say they have hired new coordinators and posted notices of nondiscrimination. The deadline to come up with a draft of the new complaint procedures is today, to be followed by employee training. Inoshita said more information will be forthcoming at Thursday’s Board of Education meeting.

The federal review included a statewide survey of students in grades 5 and up in 2104. More than 20,000 students who responded to the survey, or 31 percent of the total, said they had been personally bullied or harassed at school, on the way to or from school, or at a school-sponsored function that academic year. Of those who had been harassed, 6 out of 10 said they believed it was because of their race, sex or disability.

Along with Kishimoto, the suit names Principals Elynne E. Chung of Mililani Middle, Bernadette Tyrell of Castle and Beverly Stanich of Wailuku Elementary as well as Robert Davis, Central Oahu complex-area superintendent, and unnamed DOE defendants.

Fullum, the lead plaintiff, grew up in Mililani and said she thought she was sending her daughter to a good public school. “Our whole thing in doing this is to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else,” she said.

Her daughter, a slender 13-year-old, now attends a private school.

“I was getting bullied almost every day by these 10 girls,” said the girl, identified as J.F. in court filings. “I can’t explain to you how much hurt it brought to me. They called me the N-word and many other words.”

She wound up severely depressed and diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the suit. At one point she sent an email threatening to shoot the school and her harassers. “I did this out of anger and frustration because there was no help,” she said. “I got suspended for 44 days.”

Seitz said the current lawsuit could have wider implications than the special-education case that led to the Felix Consent Decree.

“I think this is potentially worse,” he said, “because, given what we’ve seen elsewhere in the country, where kids who have been bullied take matters into their own hands and do something that harms other people, this is a prescription for disaster.”

Fullum et al v. Kishimoto et al by Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Scribd