Writing prompt Grade 9 Social Studies & Civics

Should Brayhampton Landlords Disclose Lead Service Lines?

A grade 9 argument writing prompt on a fictional rental disclosure ordinance, with background, a planning organizer, a full exemplar essay, and a four-level rubric.

Grade: Grade 9
Subject: Social Studies & Civics
Material: Writing prompt
Time: 2 sessions, ~90 min total
Prep: No prep
Materials: None

Standards

WHST.9-10.1 Common Core ELA

Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content.

How this material aligns: Students write an argument on a civic question, supporting a claim with evidence from the background and answering the strongest counterclaim.

All materials for WHST.9-10.1 →

D2.Civ.13.9-12 C3 Framework

Evaluate public policies in terms of intended and unintended outcomes, and related consequences.

How this material aligns: The prompt requires students to weigh the intended outcome of the disclosure rule against the unintended outcomes landlords raise.

All materials for D2.Civ.13.9-12 →

D2.Eco.1.9-12 C3 Framework

Analyze how incentives influence choices that may result in policies with a range of costs and benefits for different groups.

How this material aligns: The strongest counterclaim in this prompt is the owners' cost argument, so answering it requires students to say how the requirement changes what landlords and renters do and who bears the cost.

All materials for D2.Eco.1.9-12 →

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This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely, without attribution. Updated 2026-09-04.

Objectives

Students will state a claim on a local policy question and support it with three pieces of evidence.
Students will represent the strongest opposing argument fairly and answer it.
Students will distinguish a national regulatory fact from a detail invented for the scenario.

Vocabulary

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.
Action level: A trigger number in lead and copper testing. If too many homes test above this level, the utility must take steps like improving treatment and telling the public.

Also: disclosure, inventory, counterclaim

Teacher overview

A renter cannot dig up the pipe that brings water into a building and usually cannot pay to replace it, so the household most exposed to a lead service line is rarely the one with the authority to do anything about it. Students write an argument to a fictional town council on whether landlords should be required to tell prospective tenants what the water utility's inventory says about the property's service line. The background gives students real federal figures and clearly labeled invented details about the fictional town, so no outside research is needed.

Should Brayhampton Landlords Disclose Lead Service Lines? — Grade 9 Social Studies & Civics

Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Prompt

Background. Water reaches a building through a service line. In many older neighborhoods that line is lead, or is galvanized pipe that once sat downstream of lead. Water utilities have now built inventories listing each address as lead, galvanized requiring replacement, non-lead, or unknown.

Here is what federal rules say. EPA's lead action level is 15 ppb, dropping to 10 ppb in 2027 under the Lead and Copper Rule Improvements. That rule also requires water systems to replace nearly all lead service lines within 10 years. EPA's most recent estimate, published in November 2025 and built from the inventories utilities reported that year, is that about 4 million lead service lines remain in US water systems. That total counts about 3 million lines reported as lead or galvanized requiring replacement, plus about 1 million lines of unknown material that EPA predicts are lead. EPA also notes that lead in drinking water disproportionately affects lower-income communities.

Now the local situation. Brayhampton and every figure about it below are fictional, written for this prompt.

Brayhampton's utility has inventoried 11,000 service lines. Of those, 2,900 are lead or unknown.
The utility reports that 62 percent of the lead or unknown lines serve rental properties.
The utility's replacement schedule reaches the last of those lines in nine years.
The fictional utility estimates that replacing the private side of one line costs the property owner about $4,500.
The proposed ordinance would require a landlord to give a prospective tenant the utility's inventory record for that address before the lease is signed, along with a one-page notice on filters and flushing. It would not require any landlord to replace a line. The penalty for failing to disclose would be $250.
The Brayhampton Property Owners Association opposes the ordinance. A tenants' group supports it.

Your task. Write an argument essay addressed to the Brayhampton Town Council. Take a position for or against the proposed disclosure ordinance. Support your claim with at least three pieces of evidence from the background above. Name the strongest argument against your position, state it fairly, and answer it. Close by telling the council what to do.

Your essay should run four to six paragraphs. Label each piece of evidence as a federal figure or as a Brayhampton detail.

Planning Organizer

Section	What to write here	My notes
Claim	One sentence stating your position on the ordinance, written so a council member could vote on it.
Reason 1 and evidence	Your first reason, plus the federal figure or Brayhampton detail that supports it.
Reason 2 and evidence	Your second reason, plus a different piece of evidence.
Reason 3 and evidence	Your third reason, plus a third piece of evidence.
Counterclaim	The strongest argument on the other side, stated the way its supporters would state it.
Rebuttal	Your answer to that argument. Say what is true in it before you say why it does not decide the question.
Closing	What you want the council to do, in one or two sentences.

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 Brayhampton Town Council should adopt the service line disclosure ordinance, because renters carry a risk they cannot see and cannot fix on their own.

The first reason is that the information already exists. Brayhampton's utility has inventoried 11,000 service lines and found that 2,900 are lead or unknown, a Brayhampton detail. The ordinance does not ask a landlord to test anything or hire anyone. It asks the landlord to hand over a record the utility has already produced. Because following the rule would cost a landlord almost nothing, the council has little reason not to adopt it.

The second reason is that renters are the people most affected. The utility reports that 62 percent of the lead or unknown lines serve rental properties, another Brayhampton detail. This matches what EPA reports nationally. EPA's November 2025 estimate is that about 4 million lead service lines remain in US systems, and EPA notes that lead in drinking water disproportionately affects lower-income communities. Owners can look up their own address. Renters often do not know the inventory exists.

The third reason is timing. Brayhampton's replacement schedule reaches the last lead lines in nine years, and the federal rule gives systems 10 years. A tenant who signs a lease this month may be drinking through a lead line for most of a decade. Disclosure does not shorten that wait, but it lets a tenant ask for a filter, run the tap before drinking, or choose a different unit.

The strongest argument against the ordinance deserves a fair statement. The Property Owners Association argues that disclosure punishes owners for a pipe they did not install and cannot replace on the utility's schedule, and that an "unknown" record will frighten tenants away from buildings that may be perfectly safe. That is a real problem, and the association is right that replacing the private side costs about $4,500, which a small owner cannot simply absorb.

Still, the argument does not decide the question. Disclosure does not assign blame, and the ordinance carries no replacement requirement at all. The "unknown" label is a reason to finish the inventory faster, not a reason to keep tenants from seeing it. The council should adopt the ordinance, and it should pair it with a filter program so that the information the tenant receives comes with something the tenant can use.

Rubric

Criterion	1, Emerging	2, Developing	3, Proficient	4, Advanced
Claim	No clear position, or the position shifts during the essay.	States a position, but it is vague about what the council should do.	States a clear position on the ordinance in one sentence a council member could act on.	States a clear position and previews the reasons that will support it.
Evidence and reasoning	Offers opinion with no evidence from the background.	Uses one piece of evidence, or uses evidence without explaining it.	Uses three pieces of evidence, labels each as federal or Brayhampton, and explains how each supports the claim.	Uses three or more pieces, labels them correctly, and explains why a federal figure applies to the fictional town.
Counterclaim and rebuttal	No counterclaim appears.	Names an opposing view but states it as an obvious mistake.	States the strongest opposing argument fairly and answers it.	States it fairly, concedes what is true in it, and shows why the conclusion still fails.
Organization and conventions	Paragraphs run together; frequent errors interrupt meaning.	Paragraphing is uneven; errors are noticeable but meaning is clear.	Four to six paragraphs in a logical order, with few errors.	Paragraphs build in a deliberate order, transitions connect the reasons, and conventions are clean.

Differentiation

Support

Give students the exemplar's first two paragraphs with the claim and one reason removed, and ask them to supply those two pieces before drafting the rest. Provide a labeled evidence bank in which each Brayhampton detail and each federal figure is printed on its own line, so students select rather than search.

Extension

Ask students to write the two-paragraph response the fictional Property Owners Association would send after the essay is published, using at least two pieces of evidence from the same background. Students then mark which sentence in their own essay that response is hardest to answer.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "service line," "disclosure," "inventory," and "counterclaim" with a simple cross-section sketch showing the main in the street, the service line, and the point where the property owner's responsibility usually begins. Provide sentence frames: "The council should ___ because ___," "One reason is ___, which the utility reports as ___," and "Opponents argue ___. That is true, but ___."

Extensions

Students look up their own address in the water utility's published service line inventory, where one is posted, and write a paragraph describing what the record says and what the utility tells customers to do about it. A second option is to draft the one-page filter and flushing notice the fictional Brayhampton ordinance would require, written so a general audience can follow it.