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Lesson plan Grade 10 Social Studies & Civics

Stanfold's Drought Order: State Power and Local Choice

A grade 10 lesson in which student staff teams weigh restrictions, a drought surcharge, and rebates to meet a fictional governor's emergency conservation order.

Objectives

  1. Students will distinguish what a state emergency order requires from what a city chooses.
  2. Students will compare three conservation instruments by cost, speed, and who bears the burden.
  3. Students will take part in a structured work session and record a reasoned recommendation.

Vocabulary

Drought surcharge
An extra fee added to water bills during a drought. It encourages people to use less water and replaces money the utility loses when everyone conserves.

Also: emergency order, preemption, rebate, baseline, straw poll

Teacher overview

A drought emergency declared at the state capitol arrives in a city as a target rather than a plan, because the order usually says how much water must be saved and leaves the method to the local supplier. This lesson gives students that division of labor in a fictional state, where the governor orders urban suppliers to cut deliveries by one-fifth and the city of Stanfold must choose among mandatory restrictions, a drought surcharge, and a rebate program. Student staff teams argue one instrument each in a structured work session and the class votes. The misconception worth naming first is that an emergency declaration itself conserves water; the declaration sets a requirement and a deadline, while every gallon saved comes from a local rule that someone has to write, fund, and enforce.

Procedure

Framing the emergency order (7 min). Present the situation in the fictional state: reservoir storage on the Sallowby River has fallen for three straight years, and the governor has ordered every urban water supplier to cut deliveries by one-fifth against a baseline year. Establish two facts before anything else. The order sets the target and the deadline, and the city chooses the method. Ask the class what the governor's office can do if Stanfold misses the target, and let students see that enforcement runs through reporting and penalties on the utility rather than on individual households.

Reading the three instruments (10 min). Distribute the Student Handout and have students read the three staff proposals and the exemption request from the Drayling Valley Water District. Students answer items 1 through 3 as they read. Ask for a show of hands on which instrument students expect to save water fastest, and record the count on the board so it can be compared with the straw poll at the end.

Team preparation (12 min). Divide the class into three staff teams, one per instrument, plus two students who serve as the presiding officer and the clerk. Each team prepares a two-minute case naming the water it expects to save, who pays, and the enforcement it needs. Require each team to name the strongest objection to its own instrument, because the work session gives every team one round of questions to answer, and each student answers items 4 and 5.

Council work session (14 min). Run the session on a stated protocol: two minutes per team, then one round of clarifying questions in which each team must answer at least one question from another team, then a straw poll, then a motion adopting one instrument with an amendment if the presiding officer accepts one. The clerk records the motion and the vote. Hold teams to the protocol rather than allowing open argument, since the protocol is what makes this a deliberative process rather than a debate.

Exit check (7 min). Students complete item 6 individually and turn in the handout. Read item 6 first: a response that names an instrument, states who bears its cost, and answers the objection its own team raised meets the aim of the lesson, while a response that only repeats the team's talking points has not yet weighed the trade-off.

Stanfold's Drought Order: State Power and Local Choice — Grade 10 Social Studies & Civics
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

Stanfold, the Drayling Valley Water District, and the Sallowby River are fictional. The governor has ordered every urban water supplier in the state to cut deliveries by one-fifth against last year's use, with the first compliance report due in ninety days. Stanfold's council must choose how to meet the target. Read the three staff proposals and the exemption request, then answer the questions.

Proposal 1, mandatory restrictions. Outdoor watering is limited to two days a week, decorative fountains are shut off, and a first violation brings a written warning, and each later violation brings a $75 fine. Staff estimate the order could take effect within two weeks and would need four seasonal inspectors.

Proposal 2, a drought surcharge. Each household keeps its normal rate up to a monthly baseline set from its own winter use, and pays an added $5.50 for every hundred cubic feet above that baseline. Staff estimate a rate hearing and billing changes would take about ten weeks, and that the surcharge would raise revenue the city could rebate later.

Proposal 3, rebates. The city pays households to remove lawn turf and replace older fixtures, funded from reserves. Staff estimate the savings are permanent but arrive slowly, with most installations finished after the ninety-day report is due.

Exemption request. The Drayling Valley Water District, which serves farms and several small towns east of Stanfold, has asked the state for an exemption. The district says it banked water underground in wet years, paid for that storage itself, and should not be ordered to cut deliveries it already saved.

  1. State what the governor's order requires and what it leaves to the city of Stanfold to decide.
  2. Which of the three proposals could meet the ninety-day deadline, and which could not? Give the reason each way.
  3. For each proposal, name the group that bears most of its cost.
  4. Proposal 2 sets each household's baseline from its own winter use. Explain one way that is fairer than a single citywide baseline and one way it is less fair.
  5. Evaluate the Drayling Valley exemption request. Give the strongest argument for granting it and the strongest argument against, then say which you find stronger and why.
  6. Recommend one instrument, or a combination, for Stanfold to adopt. Name who bears the cost of your choice and answer the strongest objection to it.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Answer: The order requires every urban supplier to cut deliveries by one-fifth against last year's use and to report within ninety days. It leaves to Stanfold the choice of method, the rules that carry it out, the funding, and the enforcement.
  2. Answer: Proposals 1 and 2 can meet the deadline, restrictions in about two weeks and the surcharge in about ten weeks, both inside the ninety-day window. Also accept an answer that Proposal 2 is doubtful, because it would operate for only about three weeks before the report is due. Proposal 3 cannot, because most installations would finish after the report is due even though the savings last longer.
  3. Answer: Proposal 1 falls on households with lawns and on the city, which must pay the inspectors. Proposal 2 falls on households that use the most water above their own baseline. Proposal 3 falls on all ratepayers through the reserves spent, while the benefit goes to the households that take the rebate.
  4. Answer: Accept any answer that names both sides. A baseline from a household's own winter use is fairer because it scales to household size and indoor need rather than treating a family of six like a single resident. It is less fair because a household that already conserved in winter gets a low baseline and is charged sooner, while a wasteful household is rewarded with room to spare.
  5. Answer: Accept either conclusion with reasoning. For the exemption: the district paid to store water in wet years, and cutting its deliveries anyway punishes the exact behavior the state wants to encourage. Against: an emergency order that exempts anyone who claims prior savings becomes unenforceable, and the banked water sits in an aquifer the whole basin shares. Credit rests on which argument the student weighs and why, not on the side chosen.
  6. Answer: Accept any recommendation that names the instrument, the group bearing the cost, and a real objection answered. A strong combined answer adopts restrictions immediately to meet the deadline and rebates alongside them for savings that outlast the drought, concedes that the inspectors cost money and that enforcement falls unevenly on households with visible lawns, and explains how the reserves spent on rebates would be replenished.

Differentiation

Support

Give students a comparison grid with the three proposals as rows and the columns speed, who pays, and enforcement, and let them fill it in during the reading step so that items 2 and 3 become a matter of reading their own grid. Assign these students the clerk role, which requires recording the motion accurately rather than composing an argument under time pressure.

Extension

Have students draft the amendment they would offer from the floor, in the form of a single sentence added to the adopted proposal, and explain which team's objection the amendment answers and which one it does not. Ask them to predict how the Drayling Valley district would respond to the amended proposal.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "emergency order," "baseline," "surcharge," and "rebate" with a simple bar sketch showing a household's normal use, its baseline, and the amount above it. Allow team members to present from a written script, and provide sentence frames for item 6 such as "Stanfold should adopt ... because ... , even though ... ."

Extensions

Have students find whether their own state has a drought or water emergency statute and what it authorizes a governor to order. A short write-up can name who the order would reach, whether farms are treated differently from cities, and what happens to a supplier that misses its target.