A privately run Atlanta public school acts as a virtual prison that subjects students to routine body searches, leaves them unprotected against violence and fails to educate them, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The lawsuit targets the Atlanta Board of Education and Community Education Partners, the private company that has a contract to run the alternative school for middle and high school students who have been expelled from regular public schools.

The ACLU contends the school violates the United States and Georgia constitutions on a number of levels including failing to provide an adequate education.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of eight students, depicts the school as awash in violence, inflicted by students, faculty and police. The school documented 189 fights among its 415 students in 2006, according to the lawsuit. The school was responsible for nearly 68 percent of all the battery reports compiled by the 90 schools in the Atlanta Public School district.

"None of these reports reflects the violence inflicted upon students by teachers and administrators," the lawsuit said. "Teachers and at least one administrator routinely hit students, throw books and throw students against the walls or to the floor." Community Education Partners, based in Nashville, could not be reached for comment.

Atlanta Public Schools spokesman Joe Manguno said late Tuesday he was unfamiliar with the practices but said the school specializes in disruptive students who have been expelled multiple times.

He said the school currently has 460 students enrolled and contended many return to regular classes when their behavior improves and they catch up academically. "We don't have the resources to educate children with these type of issues," he said.

The lawsuit also charges there are daily searches of all students when they arrive.

"They are subject to a humiliating search when they come to school —- girls are forced to raise their blouses up to their necks," said Emily Chiang, a New York lawyer who helped draft the lawsuit.

Chiang also contended that not only kids with behavioral problems end up in the school. She said one of the plaintiffs, currently a 10th-grader, moved to the Atlanta school system last year from southwest Georgia, where he had never been suspended. He was prevented from enrolling in a regular school for a month because of bureaucratic delays and then was told he had missed too much class time and would have to enroll in the alternative school instead.