Writing prompt Grade 11 Careers & CTE
Harberton Valley: Provisional License or Shared Operator?
A grade 11 careers argument prompt on how a fictional 900-person water system should replace its retiring operator, with a full exemplar and a four-level rubric.
Objectives
- Students will evaluate two staffing options against the requirement for a certified operator in responsible charge.
- Students will support a recommendation with at least three pieces of evidence from the background.
- Students will state the strongest counterclaim to their recommendation and answer it.
Vocabulary
Key words: operator in responsible charge, provisional certificate, shared services, circuit rider, counterclaim, rate impact
Teacher overview
Students write an argument telling a small water system's board how to replace the only certified operator it has. The choice is between a two-year provisional certificate for the employee already on staff and a shared services contract that borrows a certified operator from a neighboring utility. Boards in small communities face this decision often, because a system can be too small to support a second licensed position while state rules still require it to have one. Two points are worth settling before students draft. A license belongs to the person, not to the system, so a retirement takes the credential out the door with the retiree. A provisional certificate also carries a fixed expiration date, and it ends on that date whether or not the employee has passed the exam.
Prompt
Background. Harberton Valley Water System is a fictional community system serving about 900 people through 380 connections. It draws from two wells and disinfects in a small building beside the older well house. One certified operator has run it for 22 years, and he retires in four months.
State rules require every community water system to name a certified operator in responsible charge. The system's only other full-time employee is a maintenance worker with nine years there. He does not hold a license. The board has two options the state has said it will accept.
Option A, the provisional certificate. The state would issue a two-year provisional certificate to the maintenance worker, who would become the operator in responsible charge. A circuit rider operator would visit monthly to review his records and answer questions. He must pass the regular certification exam within those two years, or the certificate ends. The system would pay $3,200 for coursework and exam fees and raise his pay by $6,500 a year. In the fictional system's record, he has finished two of the four required courses.
Option B, the shared operator. Aldstone Regional Water, a fictional utility 18 miles away, would supply a certified operator to serve as operator in responsible charge for eight hours a week. The contract costs $41,000 a year and runs three years. The maintenance worker would keep doing daily rounds under that operator's direction. In the fictional record, the Aldstone operator already covers one other small system and says she can take one more.
What the numbers mean for households. The system has 380 connections. Option A's pay raise works out to about $17 per connection a year, plus the one-time course cost. Option B works out to about $108 per connection a year for three years.
What is true beyond Harberton Valley. Operators typically enter the field with a high school diploma, on-the-job training, and a state license earned by exam, and licenses run in classes tied to plant size and experience. About 10,000 operator openings are projected each year from 2025 to 2035, and all of them are expected to come from replacing workers who retire or leave for other occupations. Roughly one-third of the water workforce becomes retirement-eligible within the next decade, and in 2016 only about 10 percent of water workers were 24 or younger, compared with 12.5 percent of all U.S. workers. Median pay for operators was $60,020 in May 2025, while the lowest-paid tenth earned less than $39,110. A widely used rule of thumb treats combined water and sewer bills above about 4.5 percent of household income as a high burden.
Your task. Write an argument to the Harberton Valley board recommending Option A or Option B. State a precise claim. Support it with at least three pieces of evidence from the background. Name the strongest objection to your recommendation and answer it. Close by saying what the board should do and what sign would show within a year that the choice was working. Write four to six paragraphs.
Planning Organizer
Fill in every row before you draft. Each row becomes at least one sentence in your argument.
| Part of the argument | What you will write |
|---|---|
| Claim: which option the board should choose, in one sentence | |
| Reason 1, and the evidence from the background that supports it | |
| Reason 2, and the evidence from the background that supports it | |
| Reason 3, and the evidence from the background that supports it | |
| Cost: what your option costs each connection, and how that compares | |
| Risk: the thing your option could get wrong, stated plainly | |
| Counterclaim: the strongest argument for the option you rejected | |
| Rebuttal: why your recommendation still holds | |
| Conclusion: what the board should do, and one sign within a year that it worked |
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Exemplar & Rubric
Exemplar response
The Harberton Valley board should sign the shared services contract with Aldstone Regional Water, and it should write a mentoring requirement into that contract. The provisional certificate is the cheaper plan on paper, yet it puts an unlicensed employee in responsible charge of a public water system for two years and leaves the board with no backup if he does not pass. The shared operator meets the state requirement on the first day the current operator is gone.
The first reason is that the requirement is not flexible. State rules say a community water system must name a certified operator in responsible charge, and a license belongs to the person who earned it. When the current operator retires, the credential leaves with him. Option B replaces it immediately with an operator who already holds a license and already runs a second small system. Option A replaces it with a promise to earn one within two years.
The second reason is that the board cannot count on hiring its way out of a failure. About 10,000 operator openings are projected each year from 2025 to 2035, and all of them are expected to come from replacing workers who retire or change careers rather than from new systems. Roughly one-third of the water workforce is retirement-eligible within the decade, and in 2016 only about 10 percent of water workers were 24 or younger. If the maintenance worker does not pass the exam in two years, the board will be looking for a licensed operator in the same market that produced this vacancy, only later and with less notice.
The third reason is that the contract buys judgment the system does not currently have. Eight hours a week of a certified operator brings more than a signature, because that operator has seen a disinfection failure, knows what a sample result should look like before it is reported, and can tell the maintenance worker which problems can wait until Thursday. Median operator pay was $60,020 in May 2025, and the contract costs $41,000 a year, so the board is buying part of an experienced operator's time rather than a full position, and it gets that experience without having to hire into a market that is short of licensed operators.
The strongest objection is cost, and it is a serious one. Option B costs about $108 per connection a year against about $17 for the pay raise in Option A, and a small system's customers feel that. A widely used rule of thumb treats combined water and sewer bills above about 4.5 percent of household income as a high burden, and an extra $108 a year moves every household closer to that line. The objection also carries a second point that deserves respect: the contract money builds nothing local, while Option A would leave the system with its own licensed operator at the end.
That objection is answerable, but only if the board refuses to treat the two options as exclusive. The contract should require the Aldstone operator to supervise the maintenance worker's training hours and to sign the experience documentation his exam application will need. The board can fund the remaining two courses out of the same budget that would have paid for them under Option A. The board should approve the three-year contract with that mentoring clause attached, and it should expect one clear sign within a year, which is the maintenance worker sitting for the certification exam with documented hours behind him. If that has not happened by next spring, the contract bought compliance and nothing else, and the board should say so out loud at that meeting.
Rubric
| Criterion | Emerging | Developing | Proficient | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claim | No clear recommendation, or the position shifts between paragraphs | Recommends an option but states it vaguely | States a precise recommendation in one sentence and holds it throughout | States a precise recommendation, holds it, and names the condition attached to it |
| Evidence and reasoning | Uses no evidence from the background | Uses one piece of evidence, or names evidence without explaining it | Uses at least three pieces of evidence and explains how each supports the claim | Uses at least three pieces, explains each, and separates the fictional Harberton Valley figures from the national data |
| Cost and risk | Names neither the cost to households nor the risk of the option | Names a cost or a risk but not both | Names what the option costs each connection and the risk it accepts | Compares the cost of both options per connection and states what would make the risk unacceptable |
| Counterclaim and rebuttal | No counterclaim appears | Names a counterclaim but does not answer it | States the strongest opposing argument and answers it with evidence | States the strongest opposing argument, grants what is true in it, and shows why the recommendation still holds |
| Organization and conventions | Paragraphs are unordered and errors interfere with meaning | Structure is present but transitions are missing and errors distract | Four to six organized paragraphs with clear transitions and few errors | Purposeful paragraph order, controlled transitions, and clean conventions throughout |
Differentiation
Support
Give students the claim sentence written two ways, one for each option, and let them choose and revise rather than compose from nothing. Provide a highlighted background sheet with the six most usable pieces of evidence already marked. Allow a four-paragraph response that places the counterclaim and the rebuttal in one paragraph.
Extension
Ask students to write the one-paragraph note the board chair would send to customers explaining the decision and its effect on the bill, in language a customer would accept without a technical background. Students who want a harder version can draft the mentoring clause itself, stating what the shared operator must document and what happens if the training hours are not signed.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "operator in responsible charge," "provisional certificate," "shared services," "circuit rider," and "counterclaim" with short definitions and a two-column chart showing what each option provides on day one and after two years. Provide sentence frames for the counterclaim and rebuttal: "Supporters of Option ___ argue that ___. That is true, and yet ___."
Extensions
Have students find how their own state handles a small system that loses its certified operator, since state drinking water programs publish their certification rules and many describe circuit rider or shared services assistance, and report in two sentences whether either option in this prompt would be available where they live. A second option is to have students interview a local public works or utility employee about how that system documents experience hours for the certification exam, which is the part of the pathway students most often overlook.