PITTSBURGH — A federal judge on Wednesday approved letting Pittsburgh Public Schools pay $55,000 to settle what's believed to be a first-of-its-kind lawsuit by a woman who claims her daughter was bullied into anorexia — even though the plaintiffs now feel slighted.

The 37-year-old woman identified only as "Mary V." in court documents, and her daughter, now 15, sued last August over harassment by boys during the 2006-07 and 2007-08 school years, when the girl was in sixth and seventh grades.

The girl's mother now pays about $6,000 a year for the girl to attend private school, attorney Edward Olds told U.S. District Judge Donetta Ambrose on Wednesday. That tuition was apparently part of the reason the woman and her daughter were upset that the judge enforced a settlement agreement signed in May after a five-hour mediation session.

"Now I look back and their offer was an insult," the girl's mother told the judge, noting that her daughter has also "lost college money."

She was referring to Pittsburgh Promise, a scholarship program funded by local businesses and foundations to encourage students to stay in city schools. Graduates can get up to $5,000 a year for college.

Experts, including the head of the National Eating Disorders Association, said such a lawsuit was the first of its kind.

The lawsuit contends a guidance counselor did nothing to stop the bullying by three boys in sixth grade, and instead made a comment "to the effect that boys will be boys and they must like (the girl) if they are teasing her."

The girl's mother says two other boys joined in the daily harassment in seventh grade, and by February 2008, the girl entered an inpatient treatment program for anorexia nervosa because "her weight was dangerously low."

The boys received a one-day suspension.