The San Francisco school board president plans to introduce a measure next week that would preserve the controversial mural at Washington High School instead of destroying the 1936 frescoes.

President Stevon Cook said in a statement Friday that he is excited to propose a solution to cover up the “objectionable content depicted” in the Depression-era mural entitled “Life of Washington.”

“I am introducing a vote at our next regular Board of Education meeting to cover over the mural with panels or another similar treatment, which will preserve the artwork and not destroy it,” Cook said. “This should satisfy those who were concerned about the possible destruction of art.”

The next school board meeting is scheduled for Tuesday.

The announcement comes roughly two months after Cook and the rest of the school board voted to paint over the 1,600-square-foot mural, which shows images of enslaved Africans and a deceased Native American. Critics have called the mural, painted by Russian emigre Victor Arnautoff, racist and offensive toward people of color.

Cook said that most people should agree that the 13-panel mural “depicts the racist history of America” and said it’s important to acknowledge the “racism, discrimination, and the dehumanizing of people of color and women in American history.”

“Without harming this artwork, we want to see something in its place that shows the heroism of people of color in America, how we have fought against, and continue to battle discrimination, racism, hatred and poverty,” Cook added.

The cost to paint over the mural is estimated to be at least $600,000, according to the school board. This new proposal would call for the mural to be “digitized” so that historians could study it, with solid panels or other materials obscuring the mural from public view.

Proponents of keeping the mural in the high school’s administration building have said the mural is a historical tool to teach students about George Washington’s actions as the country’s first president. Many supporters have said that the mural is not applauding the massacre of Native Americans and enslavement of Africans, but critically examining the country’s oppression of people of color. Supporters have likened destroying the mural to censorship.

Jon Golinger, the executive director of the Coalition to Protect Public Art, said in a statement that he would “applaud” the proposal to not destroy the mural and called the idea a “positive step forward for the School Board to recognize that irreversibly destroying this important work of public art is the wrong course of action.”

Still, Golinger said the coalition would oppose any solution that puts up an “impenetrable barrier” that prevents passersby from viewing the mural, citing the mural’s “educational” purposes on the nation’s history.

In a recent poll of 300 likely San Francisco voters conducted by Tulchin Research, more than 76% surveyed opposed the school board’s vote to spend the estimated $600,000 to cover the mural.

The poll, which was commissioned by the Coalition to Protect Public Art, also reported that 12% of those surveyed said they support destroying the mural. Three-quarters of those who participated in the poll said that they would favor a ballot measure Golinger’s group was working on to require citywide voter approval before any Depression-era mural in the city could be destroyed.

Cook previously told The Chronicle that the poll’s results were not surprising because he thought the public’s critiques have largely been fueled by news coverage of the mural, some of which he described as being “click bait,” using language like “‘whitewashing over,’ ‘destroying’ and ‘spending over a half a million dollars.’”

Golinger said the coalition is open to collaborate with school board officials to develop a curriculum to help students contextualize “these historic murals.”

Lauren Hernández is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lauren.hernandez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LaurenPorFavor