Depending on whom you ask, a 1,600-sq-ft art installation at George Washington high school in San Francisco is either an unflinching look at American history, a stark depiction of violence against oppressed minorities – or both.

In New Deal-era murals spanning the staircase and lobby, the Russian emigre Victor Arnautoff depicted Washington in 13 scenes. Two in particular have generated student complaints for more than 50 years, and in April, an ad hoc committee recommended that the artwork be archived and removed.

In one, the statesman stands over a map of a young America while pointing westward; at the end of his arm, four white settlers with rifles rendered in monochrome walk over the full-color body of a deceased Indian whose face is turned away from the viewer. At the dead man’s feet, another Native American, wearing a headdress, sits at a campfire and shares a pipe with another armed white man.

On the opposite wall, the owner of the plantation at Mount Vernon confers with a white man who gestures at some of Washington’s slave laborers: a shoeless black man shucking corn, three stooped, faceless black women in the far distance picking cotton and another black man who hammers wood for a group of white men manufacturing barrels.

In a statement following the committee decision, the San Francisco unified school district said: “The majority of the group expressed that the main reason to keep the mural up at the school is focused on the legacy of the artist, rather than experience of the students.”

A mural at George Washington high school. Photograph: Walter Thompson/The Guardian

The matter will be decided by the city’s board of education, but because the school was built under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration – a Depression-era federal infrastructure program – the federal General Services Administration (GSA) could have the final say. Although the Arnautoff murals are not part of the GSA’s fine arts collection, the agency has taken an interest in the matter and has asked the school district to keep it updated.

Set atop a rise in a residential district that offers views of the downtown skyline, George Washington high school was built in 1936. The experience of walking into the streamline moderne-style building’s main entrance hasn’t changed in 83 years: after pulling open doors watched over by bas-relief sculptures of Edison, Shakespeare and Washington, students climb stairs flanked by the murals.

When the frescos were unveiled in June 1936, the San Francisco Chronicle gave its unqualified approval: “Arnautoff goes back to the facts of colonial days, with all their conflict, idealism and fierce reality,” the art critic reported.

Since then, things have changed. The city is riven by economic inequality and racial segregation – but laws and cultural traditions have carved out systems and spaces where minority groups can usually be heard from, if not always listened to.

Although he believes Arnautoff meant to demythologize Washington, Max Bormann, a senior at the school, said it was time to remove the murals. “The intention matters, but the way it’s shown reflects poorly,” Bormann, 18, said. “If you looked at it and you didn’t know the history of the work, you just see white people owning people and enslaving people without any of the idea that this was the real history.”

Paloma Flores, a member of California’s Pitt River Tribe who is also the district’s Indian education program coordinator, said she found the image of the dead Indian “painful” when she first visited the campus.

“I knew how to respond to it,” she said. “But why would we believe that young minds are expected to discern better? Washington high’s murals are disturbing and they do have dire consequences.”

In 2016 – the same year a local heritage not-for-profit proposed making the school a historical landmark – Flores said a Native American student expressed concerns about the murals at home. For three years, SFUSD’s American Indian parent advisory council told the board of education that Native American students were coping with “feelings of invisibility and misrepresentation”, according to documents obtained by the Guardian.

Last year, SFUSD assembled a “reflection and action” group and tasked it with reviewing Arnautoff’s artwork, coming up with ways to ameliorate its “social and emotional impact”, and suggesting a plan of action, according to district documents that outline the group’s process. Comprising school administrators, students, parents, artists and other members of the community, the committee met four times before calling for the murals’ removal.

A mural at George Washington high school. Photograph: Walter Thompson/The Guardian

“I learned a lot, to be honest, from the artist’s perspective, but how are we to talk of what one’s intent or perspective would have been if that person’s not present?” said Flores, who took part. “It’s all interpretation, and even with the best intention, harm can be done,” she added, citing students who look away from the artwork or avoid the school’s main entrance altogether.

Gray Brechin, however, wants to save the murals. The author and historian founded the Living New Deal, a not-for-profit that seeks to preserve art and public works created by the Works Progress Administration. He teamed with the Washington high school alumni association, the only member of the 11-member working group that voted to preserve Life of Washington.

Because the recommendation to archive and remove the artwork could be used as a template for addressing other controversial art, Brechin said, he fears that all New Deal murals are vulnerable, starting with a series at Mission high school that includes Spanish missionaries teaching “neophyte Indians”, according to the title of one installation.

“What we’re looking at is the classic slippery slope,” he said. “If the murals can be destroyed, then no work of art that anyone finds offensive is going to be safe. And that’s an awful lot of art.”

Brechin suggested using the auditorium at George Washington high school to host a conference about suppressed art. “I think there needs to be a discussion right now about what we do with these works of art that are under attack,” he said.

According to Nora Lapin, a 1960 GWHS graduate, the debate should be addressed with education, not destruction. “What we need is a plaque next to the murals which explains the basis in history and also Arnautoff’s credentials as a major artist,” she said. “What he’s portraying in that mural is fact.”

Lapin said she was skeptical of claims that the New Deal murals create a negative environment. “There were black students who never objected to it,” she said, describing her alma mater as “an extremely diverse school” in the 1950s.

In 1968, the high school’s Black Student Union called on SFUSD to correct what students described as historical inaccuracies. Eventually, they compromised on a plan to install permanent plaques with supplemental information, but it’s unclear if any were ever added.

When students protested again in 1974, the district commissioned the black muralist Dewey Crumpler to create a new work that recontextualized the murals by celebrating aspects of Asian, Latinx, Native American and African American culture.

Using vibrant colors of acrylic paint on canvas, Crumpler’s “Multi-Ethnic Heritage” triptych is still mounted in the school’s main hall, though it takes up slightly less than a quarter of the square footage occupied by Arnautoff’s frescoes.

Demographics have shifted since Lapin graduated. That year, 10% of San Franciscans were black; today, only about 5% are.

Of the 2,010 students enrolled at Washington during the 2016-2017 school year, six identified as American Indian and 77 were African American, with Asian students representing 64% of the population, followed by Hispanic students, who comprised just over 17% of the student body. Slightly more than 8% of George Washington high school’s students are white.

“The one thing I do know is that Washington is not nearly as good as it used to be. None of the schools are, because teachers don’t get paid enough,” Lapin said, noting that many of her neighbors send their children to private schools.

A mural at George Washington high school. Photograph: Walter Thompson/The Guardian

“So the people who go to them are not the most sophisticated, or whatever. You see what I’m trying to say? It’s a totally different population than it was.” Many aspects of American history are ‘painful’, said Lapin. “I think the problem is these kids are ignorant. Nobody’s told them that we had slaves and that we killed Indians.”

Flores said the images’ negative impact outweighs their historical and artistic value.

“There is no way to justify subjecting children to violent imagery because some people feel that it’s important to defend a piece that was created at a time when the mental health of children or the relevance of cultural awareness might not have been deemed as important,” she said.

Although the district offers ethnic studies in ninth grade, administrators are also examining ways to update its social studies curriculum, said Flores.

“We do have to speak the truth rather than continue to support the dominant narrative view of erasure, the romanticizing of the settlement process, and the lies that have been told,” she said. Until textbooks are updated, however, “we have great examples across our schools where history is being taught at various grade levels and it’s a truer history”.

Brechin said he encourages viewers to recall that Arnautoff intended to cast America’s first president in a more realistic light.

“The students there at George Washington aren’t looking at violence, they’re looking at a metaphorical representation of it,” he said. “So it’s hard for me, but of course, I’m white and privileged.”

• This article was amended on 7 June 2019 because George Washington high school’s murals are not owned by the General Services Administration, nor are they in its fine arts collection, as an earlier version said.