The San Francisco school board voted Tuesday to destroy a controversial school mural featuring slaves and a dead Native American, saying the removal equates to necessary reparations for historic wrongs.

The board voted to paint over the mural at Washington High School but added a caveat, leaving the door open to the possibility of obscuring the mural with panels if painting it results in long delays from legal challenges or other issues.

The preference, however, is to destroy it, board members said.

“It might be art and it can also be racist; it can be both,” said board member Alison Collins. “It’s not just about removing them from public view, it’s also about righting a wrong.”

Painting over the mural would cost at least $600,000, with the majority of the cost in producing an environmental impact report. In addition, supporters of the mural have vowed to sue if the board voted to destroy it and legal costs could add to the cost, district officials said.

Other options included covering the mural with panels, which would cost up to $825,000, or obscuring it with curtains, which would have cost up to $375,000.

“I don't want to go to court,” said board member Faauga Moliga, prior to the vote. “But if it comes down to it, then that’s what we have to do. I would like for these murals to be painted down.”

Dozens of passionate mural supporters and critics crowded the board meeting room Tuesday night to urge the board to save, or alternately, destroy the mural. They carried signs and wore t-shirts expressing their view.

“Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice,” read one sign, quoting Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

“Paint It Down!” read others.

Supporters argued the historic work, painted by Russian emigre Victor Arnautoff, is an important piece of art that is actually critical of oppression and imperialism and that destroying it or covering it equates to book burning.

“They should not be removed,” said George Wright. “Removing them represents censorship as well as reactionary moment in time.”

Critics, including students and community groups, called for the 1,600-square-foot mural to be painted over with white paint, an option supported by a district-appointed task force, saying students should not be subjected to the offensive images.

The mural, several said, made students feel unsafe and glorified violence.

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“I was never taught about the message or purpose of this mural during high school,” said Nancy Truong, a 2013 graduate of the school. “This mural is not teaching students about the history of slavery and indigenous genocide under George Washington or other white settlers. Instead it is teaching students to normalize violence and death of our black and indigenous community.”

The controversy has reflected a larger national conversation on the fate of monuments or names of streets, schools or buildings named after Confederate leaders, slave owners and white supremacists.

In Marin County, the school board recently voted to change the name of the Dixie School District after residents argued it was a symbol of the pro-slavery South and an affront to African Americans.

Yet mural supporters argued the “Life of Washington” mural isn’t an honorific monument, but a historic fresco — one that depicted the first president as a slave owner as well as someone culpable in the massacre of Native Americans in the Westward Movement.

It was a subversive piece by the artist, one that depicted Washington as flawed, supporters said.

Yet the artwork has long been the subject of controversy, with students lambasting the controversial images in the 1960s and calling for its destruction.

In response, artist Dewey Crumpler, who is black, was hired to paint additional works at the school. The so-called “compromise murals” depicted Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans and African Americans overcoming oppression.

Superintendent Vince Matthews, however, said that when he saw the Washington mural, his first reponse was to see it painted over. But he also wanted to do whatever it took to remove it from view as soon as possible, which is why he recommended covering it with panels.

“Orpah Winfrey describes racism as the everyday wearing down of the soul,” he said. “I thought about tens of thousands of students who had walked by that mural over and over and over again.”

Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker

A previous version of this story said the vote was unanimous, but did not include the information that school board member Rachel Norton was absent and did not vote.