Project Grade 6 Social Studies & Civics
Emberdale's Capital Plan: Four Projects, One Budget
A four-session grade 6 project where teams fund part of a town's water repair list within a fixed budget and defend the plan to a council panel with evidence.
Objectives
- Students will calculate each project's cost as a percent of a fixed town budget.
- Students will select a combination of projects that fits the budget and show the arithmetic.
- Students will defend a funding decision in writing using evidence from project files and resident letters.
- Students will answer a challenge from the group whose project was not funded.
Vocabulary
- Water main
- A big underground pipe that carries drinking water beneath the streets to a neighborhood. Smaller service lines branch off it to reach each building.
- Service line
- A service line is the small pipe that connects the water main under the street to the plumbing inside one home or building. It is the last leg of the trip water makes to your tap.
Also: capital budget, backup supply, tradeoff, constraint
Teacher overview
Every year a town's water department brings its council a repair list longer than the money available, and the council funds part of it. The ASCE 2025 Report Card for America's Infrastructure graded the country's drinking water systems a C- and its wastewater systems a D+, which indicates that the gap between the repair list and the money available has been a long-standing condition in many places. In this four-session project, teams act as the water department of the fictional town of Emberdale, choose which of four projects to fund within one budget, and defend the choice to a council panel. The driving question is which repairs a community should buy first when it cannot buy all of them, and the final deliverable is a written capital plan with a bar graph and a short presentation.
Project Brief
Driving question: When a town cannot fund every water project, which ones should it buy first, and how do you explain that choice to the people left waiting?
Your role: Your team is the water department of the fictional town of Emberdale. The town council has given the department $2,000,000 for water projects next year. That is all the money there is. The department has four projects on its list, and together they cost more than the budget.
The four projects:
Project A. Wolvesey Road main. Replace 1.2 miles of cast iron water main laid in the 1930s. Cost: $900,000. The department's records show seven breaks on this stretch in the last three years. Each break shuts off water to about 140 homes for most of a day.
Project B. Tamsen Street lead lines. Replace 90 lead service lines. Cost: $540,000. These lines carry water into 90 homes, including two homes that run licensed childcare.
Project C. Starling Hill well and pump house. Drill a second well and build a pump house. Cost: $1,100,000. Emberdale now has one well. If it fails, the town has no other source until repairs are done.
Project D. Market and Olney stormwater. Add rain gardens and two new inlets at a corner that floods. Cost: $350,000. The corner floods three or four times a year and blocks the shortest route from the fire station to the north side of town.
Resident letters:
From Ada Merrin, Wolvesey Road: "This is the third time in two years that I have come home to water on my basement floor after a main break. The department comes fast and works hard. The pipe is the problem, and everyone knows it."
From Paul Ocampo, parent, Tamsen Street: "My daughter spends nine hours a day at a childcare home on Tamsen Street. I have read the notices about lead in service lines. I do not want another year of running the tap before she drinks."
From Chief Rennie Coles, Emberdale Fire Department: "When the corner of Market and Olney floods, my crews have to take the long route to the north side of town, which adds several minutes to a call. Those minutes matter when a house is burning."
From Sam Kettleby, plant operator: "The town runs on one well, and it has not failed yet. I have worked here long enough to know that the pump will need major work someday, and when that day comes the town will have nowhere else to get water."
Constraints:
- Your plan may spend no more than $2,000,000. Going over by any amount fails the constraint.
- You must fund at least two of the four projects.
- Money you do not spend does not roll over. Say in your plan what you would do with it.
- You must name each project you cut and answer the resident letter for at least one of them.
What you turn in: A written capital plan of about two pages, a bar graph showing the four project costs with a line marked at the budget, and a presentation of about four minutes to a council panel of five classmates who will ask two questions.
Milestones
- Session 1: Read the list and price it. Read the four project descriptions and the four resident letters in the brief above. Complete the cost-and-share table: for each project, write its cost, its percent of the $2,000,000 budget, and the one sentence of evidence that best supports funding it. Output: a completed table for all four projects, checked by the teacher before the team moves on.
- Session 2: Choose a bundle that fits. Test at least three combinations of projects. For each, add the costs and subtract the total from $2,000,000. Choose one combination, rank the funded projects in order of urgency, and state what you would do with any money left over. Output: a one-page funding decision sheet showing the arithmetic for all three combinations you tested and the one you chose.
- Session 3: Draft the plan and the graph. Write the capital plan: a claim naming what you funded, three reasons each supported by evidence from a project file or a letter, and one paragraph answering a resident whose project you cut. Build the bar graph with the budget line marked. Output: a full draft plan and a finished graph, exchanged with another team for one round of written feedback.
- Session 4: Present to the council. Give the four-minute presentation to the council panel and answer two questions from the panel. Submit the final packet with the plan, the graph, and the decision sheet. Output: the presentation, the two answers, and the final packet.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Rubric
| Criterion | Emerging | Developing | Proficient | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Budget constraint | The plan spends more than the budget, or the totals are missing | The totals appear but contain arithmetic errors, or fewer than two projects are funded | The plan funds at least two projects, stays within the budget, and shows correct totals | The plan shows the arithmetic for three tested combinations and explains why the chosen one uses the budget best |
| Percent and data work | Percents of the budget are missing or mostly incorrect | Some percents are correct, but the table is incomplete | All four percents of the budget are correct and the graph shows the four costs with the budget line marked | The graph and percents are correct and are used inside the argument, not just attached to it |
| Use of evidence | The plan gives opinions with no evidence from the files or letters | The plan cites one piece of evidence, or cites evidence without explaining it | The plan cites at least three pieces of evidence from the files or letters and explains how each supports the claim | Evidence is chosen carefully, explained, and weighed against the evidence for the project that was cut |
| Answering the group left out | A cut project is not named, or no answer is given to that resident | The cut is named but the answer restates the claim | The plan names the cut, answers the resident directly, and offers something concrete, such as a place on next year's list | The answer treats the resident's concern seriously, concedes what is true in it, and still defends the decision |
| Presentation | Hard to follow, over or under time, and the graph is not used | The order is clear but the panel's questions go unanswered | Organized, close to four minutes, uses the graph, and answers both panel questions with evidence | Confident and well paced, uses the graph to make a point, and answers questions with evidence not already in the plan |
Differentiation
Support
Give these students a decision sheet with the four costs already listed and one sample combination already added, so their first task is subtraction against the budget rather than open search. Provide a calculator and a percent reference strip. Assign them the role of graph builder or evidence finder within the team, and let them dictate their paragraph before writing it.
Extension
Add a fifth project to the list for these teams, such as a water tower repainting priced above the remaining money in this fictional scenario, and require them to build a two-year plan that funds every project across two budgets. They must state what the town gives up by waiting a year on each delayed project and how they would explain the wait at a public meeting.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "budget," "main," "service line," "backup," and "cut" with labeled pictures of a street cross-section, a well, and a flooded corner. Provide a bilingual glossary card and the sentence frames "We funded ___ because ___" and "We could not fund ___ this year, but ___." Allow the presentation to be delivered from a written script and permit a team member to read one section aloud on a partner's behalf.
Extensions
Ask students to find their own community's capital improvement plan or water department budget, which many cities post as a public document. Students can compare the number of projects on that list with the number actually funded this year, then write a short paragraph on whether the pattern they found in Emberdale shows up in their own town.