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Worksheet Grade 8 Social Studies & Civics

Prioritizing Lead Service Line Replacement in Cassidy Heights

A grade 8 worksheet where students use a weighted scoring formula and a fixed budget to decide which of four fictional neighborhoods gets lead pipe replacement first.

Objectives

  1. Students will calculate a weighted priority score for four neighborhoods using given data.
  2. Students will apply a fixed budget and a per-unit cost to determine how many lead service lines a city can replace.
  3. Students will evaluate how the choice of scoring weights changes which neighborhoods are prioritized.

Vocabulary

Lead service line
A lead service line is an old water pipe made of lead metal that connects a house to the water main. Lead can get into the drinking water, so these pipes are being dug up and replaced across the country.

Also: priority score, budget, weighted formula

Teacher overview

Federal rules now require most US cities to replace nearly all of their lead service lines within a set number of years, but no city can replace every line on the same day. Local officials must decide which neighborhoods go first, usually using some combination of health risk, number of affected homes, and available funding. This worksheet has students act as city planners for a fictional city, using a weighted scoring formula and a fixed annual budget to rank four neighborhoods and decide how far this year's funding will stretch. A common misconception is that the neighborhood with the most homes always wins the highest priority; the scoring formula and item 11 are built to test whether that is actually true once other factors are weighted in.

Prioritizing Lead Service Line Replacement in Cassidy Heights — Grade 8 Social Studies & Civics
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

The fictional city of Cassidy Heights must replace its lead service lines under the federal Lead and Copper Rule Improvements. City planners are using this weighted formula to rank neighborhoods for this year's funding:

Priority Score = (number of homes with lead lines) + (number of children under 6 × 5)

The four neighborhoods being ranked:

Neighborhood Homes with lead lines Children under 6
Elm Hollow 220 85
Birchwood 340 40
Southgate 150 120
Riverside Court 490 60

The city's annual budget for this program is a fictional $3,000,000, and each line replacement costs a fictional $6,000.

  1. In one to two sentences, explain what a lead service line is and why federal rules now require most US cities to replace them.
  2. Calculate the priority score for Elm Hollow. Show your work.
  3. Calculate the priority score for Birchwood. Show your work.
  4. Calculate the priority score for Southgate. Show your work.
  5. Calculate the priority score for Riverside Court. Show your work.
  6. Rank the four neighborhoods from highest priority (replace first) to lowest priority, using your four scores from items 2 through 5.
  7. Using the fictional budget of $3,000,000 and a per-line cost of $6,000, how many lead service lines can Cassidy Heights replace this year if it spends the entire budget?
  8. If the city replaces all 490 lines in Riverside Court first, how much of the $3,000,000 budget remains?
  9. Using the amount remaining from item 8, how many additional lines can the city replace in Southgate, the next-highest-priority neighborhood?
  10. In two to three sentences, explain why weighting "children under 6" so heavily in the scoring formula reflects real health guidance about lead exposure.
  11. Suppose the city council instead ranked neighborhoods only by raw number of homes with lead lines, ignoring children under 6 entirely. Would Riverside Court still rank first? Would Southgate's rank change? Use the home counts from the table to explain your answer.

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: A lead service line is the pipe connecting a water main to a house.
    Federal rules require replacement because lead can dissolve into water passing through these pipes, and the Lead and Copper Rule Improvements require nearly all lead service lines nationwide to be replaced within 10 years.
  2. Answer: 645.
    220 homes + (85 children × 5) = 220 + 425 = 645.
  3. Answer: 540.
    340 homes + (40 children × 5) = 340 + 200 = 540.
  4. Answer: 750.
    150 homes + (120 children × 5) = 150 + 600 = 750.
  5. Answer: 790.
    490 homes + (60 children × 5) = 490 + 300 = 790.
  6. Answer: Riverside Court, Southgate, Elm Hollow, Birchwood.
    Ranked by score from items 2 through 5: Riverside Court (790), Southgate (750), Elm Hollow (645), Birchwood (540).
  7. Answer: 500.
    $3,000,000 ÷ $6,000 per line = 500 lines.
  8. Answer: $60,000.
    490 lines × $6,000 = $2,940,000 spent. $3,000,000 − $2,940,000 = $60,000 remaining.
  9. Answer: 10.
    $60,000 ÷ $6,000 per line = 10 additional lines, which uses up the full $3,000,000 budget (490 + 10 = 500 lines, matching item 7).
  10. Answer: Young children face the greatest health risk from lead.
    Lead exposure is especially harmful to children under 6 because their brains and nervous systems are still developing, so a formula that weights children heavily directs limited funding toward homes where the health stakes are highest, not just where the most pipes are.
  11. Answer: Riverside Court would still rank first; Southgate would drop.
    Ranked by homes alone, the order is Riverside Court (490), Birchwood (340), Elm Hollow (220), Southgate (150), so Riverside Court still ranks first, but Southgate falls from second to last because its high child count no longer counts toward its score.

Differentiation

Support (below grade level)

Provide a printed formula strip ("Score = homes + (children × 5)") and complete the calculation for one neighborhood together as a class before students work items 2 through 5 independently. Allow a calculator for all multiplication and addition.

Extension (above grade level)

Ask students to design their own weighting formula that also accounts for the average age of housing in each neighborhood, since older homes are more likely to have lead lines, assign each neighborhood a fictional age-based weight, recalculate the four scores, and explain whether the ranking changes.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "priority," "budget," and "weighted formula" with a simple visual showing a scale with more weight on one side. Provide the table data alongside a labeled step-by-step calculation box for item 2 so students can see exactly where each number in the formula goes before working items 3 through 5 on their own.