SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The $1.1 million settlement of a suit by six gay and lesbian students against the Morgan Hill school district includes a mandatory harassment training program that could become a national model, civil and gay rights groups said.

“It is not enough to have written policy,” said Alice Leeds, spokeswoman for Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, (PFLAG.) “There’s got to be an implementation of the policy.”

The agreement helps ensure that all school district employees, including teachers, counselors and bus drivers, are trained to recognize and properly handle harassment of gay students, said Stacey Wexler, one of the lawyers who worked on the case.

Former Morgan Hill district students said they suffered through years of physical and verbal abuse, while teachers and administrators did nothing.

The new training program goes into effect this year and will be mandatory through the 2008 school year.

Faculty members in the district must participate in bimonthly meetings and seventh- and ninth-graders must attend a 50-minute program detailing an anti-discrimination policy that prohibits harassment on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

“I am overcome today,” said Alana Flores, 24, of Los Banos, one of six former students who sued the Morgan Hill Unified School District in 1998.

As a high school student, Flores said she found a picture taped to her locker. It was a naked woman bound and gagged with her legs spread and her throat slashed. Someone wrote an anti-gay epithet and a death threat on the picture.

Flores said she brought the picture to an assistant principal, who told her, “Don’t bring me this trash anymore. This is disgusting.”

During a news conference announcing the agreement, Flores said other students were “mock raped” and had rocks and food thrown at them.

Freddie Fuentes, 24, of Morgan Hill, said he was in seventh grade when he was brutally beaten at a school bus stop. He said the bus driver ignored the attack.

The settlement, approved by U.S. District Court Judge James Ware, does not include any admission of wrongdoing by the school district or its employees.

“After five years of litigation, there still was no credible evidence to support plaintiffs’ allegations that any district employee ever discriminated against or acted with deliberate indifference toward any student,” school officials said.

The plaintiffs attended Live Oak High School and Britton and Murphy middle schools from 1991 to 1998. The district is located about 10 miles south of San Jose.

A survey conducted last year found that more than 90 percent of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students said they had been harassed at school, said Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.