Iowa City School District students are a step closer to achieving their goal of pushing the district to take action on climate change.

School Board members expect to vote on a resolution addressing climate change at its next meeting, in July.

The board chose not to vote on the resolution at the June 25 meeting after member Phil Hemingway expressed concerns about a resolution on developing more plant-based meal options as well as potential worries about the use of pesticides on School District property.

Board members disagreed about the carcinogenic effects of pesticides currently in use on school property.

They expressed concern about voting on amendments that the public could not view and resolved to push the vote back until the next meeting.

The proposed resolution includes propositions to increase reliance on renewable energy, promote recycling, and develop curricula to educate students about climate change.

Throughout the spring semester, School District students have been striking to push the board to pass a resolution on climate change.

The resolution proposed by the board does not yet include specific targets for emission reductions. Board President Janet Godwin said the board will determine those by the end of this year.

“The way the resolution is crafted is noted that we’re going to get those baseline data, we will set hard targets,” she said. “By Dec. 21, 2019, we will revise this resolution so we will have concrete sets of action that we will hold ourselves accountable to. I know there was a desire for us to do that, but we felt we needed to get good data to set hard targets for the resolution.”

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In the district’s proposed resolution, the University of Northern Iowa Center for Energy and Environmental Education will develop a proposal to determine greenhouse-gas emissions by the district as well as a proposal to reduce the emissions.

Superintendent Stephen Murley said the School District would be the first educational institution for which the UNI center would develop such a footprint.

“The idea is that they would develop for us that baseline for greenhouse-gas emissions — knowing something about our district record-keeping, he thinks that they can go back a number of years and give us not only where we’re going tomorrow but perhaps where we’ve been,” he said.

Murley said fees associated with the service would be minimal.

The district is working with Dubuque-based Eagle Point Solar to study the viability of rooftop and ground solar panels at various district sites.

Hemingway expressed concern about the environmental impact of solar panels.

“Again, I think we need to look at the environmental life-cycle implications of any solar activity,” Mutley said. “Cells, when they’ve reached their useful life, are hazardous waste that can’t just go in the landfill.”