Writing prompt Grade 11 English Language Arts
Selling Rushton's Water System: A Utility Ownership Argument Prompt
A grade 11 argument writing prompt on whether a fictional town should sell its water system to a private company, with sources, organizer, exemplar, and rubric.
Objectives
- Students will write an argument on utility ownership that supports a claim with cited evidence from the packet.
- Students will state the strongest opposing argument fairly and answer it with reasoning rather than dismissal.
- Students will distinguish national figures from the fictional town's own figures when citing evidence.
Vocabulary
- Rate case
- The public process a utility goes through to change what it charges for water. Officials review the utility's costs, and customers can speak up before new rates are approved.
- Public utility commission
- A group of state officials who make sure utility prices are fair. Privately owned water companies must ask this commission for permission before raising rates.
Also: municipal utility, investor-owned, capital investment, counterclaim
Teacher overview
Ownership questions produce the kind of argument this grade should be writing, because both sides can point to real costs and neither can promise that nothing changes. This prompt puts students inside a decision facing the fictional town of Rushton, whose water system needs more replacement work than the town has been funding, and which has received an offer to buy it. The packet supplies national context alongside the town's own numbers, and the rubric rewards students who keep the two straight, since the most common failure here is using a national figure to settle a local question.
Prompt
Background: the decision before the fictional Rushton town council
Rushton is a fictional town of 11,500 people that has owned and operated its own water system since 1908. The town's twelve-member public works staff includes two licensed operators, one of whom retires next year. An investor-owned company, the fictional Cordray Water Company, has offered to buy the system.
The fictional Rushton system in numbers
| Item | Figure |
|---|---|
| Miles of distribution main | 74 |
| Average age of main in the older wards | 68 years |
| Miles replaced in the past decade | 4 |
| Main breaks last year | 19 |
| Average residential bill | $47 per month |
| Town's estimate of replacement work needed over 20 years | $31 million |
| Cordray's purchase offer | $18 million, paid to the town at closing |
| Cordray's committed capital investment | $26 million over the first ten years |
National context
- The ASCE 2025 Infrastructure Report Card gave United States drinking water a grade of C-, and wastewater a D+.
- The Environmental Protection Agency's needs assessment estimates that $625 billion in drinking-water infrastructure investment is needed nationally over 20 years, with distribution pipes accounting for about two-thirds of that need.
- Combined water and sewer bills nationally rose about 24 percent from 2019 to 2024 and about 5.1 percent in 2025, outpacing inflation.
- The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that roughly one-third of the water sector workforce is eligible to retire in the next 10 years, and a 2018 Brookings study found that in 2016 only about 10 percent of water workers were 24 or younger, compared with 12.5 percent of all United States workers.
Testimony at the public hearing (fictional speakers)
Marguerite Ostrow, the town's finance director, testified in favor of the sale. She said Rushton has replaced 4 miles of main in ten years against a need she puts at 74 miles eventually, that a bond large enough to change that pace would raise the average bill sharply, and that the town has been unable to fill a licensed operator position posted twice. She said the $18 million at closing would retire the town's other debt and leave money for the fire station.
Ellis Vandegrift, a former council member, testified against the sale. He said a private owner earns a return on every dollar it invests, so the $26 million of promised work returns to Rushton residents as higher rates for decades. He noted that once the system is sold, rates are set by the state public utility commission rather than by a council that residents can vote out, and that participating in a commission rate case requires lawyers most towns cannot afford. He proposed instead that the town raise rates deliberately over five years and hire a shared operator with two neighboring towns.
Your task
Write an argument essay of five or six paragraphs for the Rushton town council. Argue either that the council should accept the Cordray offer or that it should reject it and adopt an alternative you name and describe. Support your claim with specific evidence from the packet. Make clear which of your figures describe Rushton and which describe the country as a whole. Develop the strongest objection to your position fairly, then answer it.
Planning Organizer
Fill in every row before you draft. Each row corresponds to a criterion on the rubric.
| Section of your essay | What you will write | My notes |
|---|---|---|
| Claim | One sentence stating what the council should do and why. | |
| Reason 1 | Your strongest reason, in one clause. | |
| Evidence for Reason 1 | The exact figure or testimony you will cite, labeled local or national. | |
| Reason 2 | A second, different reason, not a restatement of the first. | |
| Evidence for Reason 2 | The exact figure or testimony you will cite, labeled local or national. | |
| Counterclaim | The strongest objection from the other side, stated as its own supporter would state it. | |
| Rebuttal | Your answer, naming what you concede and what you do not. | |
| Conclusion | What the council should do at its next meeting, in one sentence. |
Check three things before you draft.
- Each evidence row should carry the word local or national, so you never use a national average to prove something about Rushton.
- Your counterclaim row should quote or closely paraphrase the speaker you disagree with, rather than a weaker version you invented.
- Your rebuttal row should concede at least one point, because an objection you cannot concede anything to was probably written too weakly.
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 (grade 11 level)
The Rushton council should reject the Cordray offer and adopt the alternative Ellis Vandegrift described, raising rates deliberately over five years while sharing a licensed operator with neighboring towns. The offer is attractive for a reason the packet makes plain, and the case against it rests on what the town would be trading away permanently.
Start with what the sale actually costs. Cordray would pay $18 million at closing and commit $26 million of capital work over ten years, and a private owner earns a return on the money it invests. Rushton residents would repay that $26 million through rates for decades, which means the town is not being given the work but financed for it at a price the packet does not disclose. The town's own replacement need over twenty years is $31 million, so the promised investment does not even cover the problem it is offered to solve.
The second cost is procedural. Today Rushton's rates are set by a council that residents elect, in meetings held in Rushton. After a sale, rates are set by the state public utility commission, and Vandegrift is right that participating in a rate case requires legal help a town of 11,500 people would struggle to fund. Losing local control is not an abstraction when the thing being controlled is a monthly bill in every household.
Marguerite Ostrow makes the strongest case for the other side, and two of her points are simply true. Rushton has replaced 4 miles of main in ten years, which is not a pace that will renew 74 miles, and the town has failed twice to fill a licensed operator position. Those are real failures of the current arrangement, and an argument against the sale that ignores them is not worth making. Nationally the staffing problem is not unique to Rushton either, since roughly one-third of the water workforce becomes retirement-eligible within the next decade.
What those points establish is that Rushton must change, not that it must sell. A rate increase phased over five years keeps the money and the decisions in town, and the shared-operator arrangement addresses the staffing gap directly rather than by handing the whole system to someone else. The national picture supports acting rather than selling: drinking water infrastructure earned a C- from the ASCE in 2025 and the EPA puts national investment needs at $625 billion over twenty years, which describes a problem no ownership arrangement removes. The council should reject the offer, adopt a five-year rate schedule at its next meeting, and open negotiations with the two neighboring towns on a shared operator position.
Rubric
| Criterion | Emerging | Developing | Proficient | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claim | Names the topic without a position the council could act on. | States a position but drifts or restates it inconsistently. | States a clear position on the offer and holds it throughout. | States a position specific enough to name the alternative and its first step, and sustains it. |
| Evidence and sourcing | Cites nothing, or misstates a figure. | Cites a figure accurately but mixes local and national evidence without distinction. | Cites at least two different pieces of evidence accurately and labels local and national correctly. | Does all of that and explains what a national figure can and cannot establish about Rushton. |
| Counterclaim and rebuttal | No counterclaim, or one raised only to dismiss. | Names an objection, then answers it by repeating the original claim. | States the strongest objection fairly and answers it with evidence or reasoning. | States the objection as its supporter would, concedes what is true, and shows why the remainder does not decide the question. |
| Organization and conventions | Paragraphs are unordered; errors interrupt meaning. | Some structure is visible; errors are noticeable but meaning survives. | Paragraphs follow a logical order with transitions; errors are minor. | The order of paragraphs advances the argument, transitions carry the logic, and conventions are controlled throughout. |
Differentiation
Support
Give these students the organizer with the Claim and Counterclaim rows completed for one of the two positions, so drafting begins at the evidence. Reduce the essay to four paragraphs and provide the frame "The strongest objection to this position is ___. That objection is right that ___, yet ___." Allow the evidence rows to be filled with row labels from the table before the sentences are written.
Extension
Ask students to write a second document from the same position: a three-minute statement for the fictional hearing, addressed to the council rather than to a reader. They should annotate what they cut and explain in three sentences why a spoken statement can carry fewer figures and more direct address than an essay can.
ELL supports
Pre-teach municipal utility, investor-owned, rate case, and commission with a simple two-column comparison chart showing who sets rates under each arrangement, and keep the chart available while students write. Provide the organizer with a sentence frame in every row. Allow the counterclaim paragraph to be rehearsed orally with a partner using the phrase "Marguerite Ostrow would say that ___," before it is written.
Extensions
Have students look up how their own water system is owned, using the utility's website or its annual water quality report, and write a one-paragraph comparison with the fictional Rushton case that names one similarity and one difference. A second option is to reassign each student the opposite position and require a one-page rebuttal to their own essay, which usually reveals which of their original reasons were doing real work.