A county fills an empty preschool seat

A child leaves an Age 4 seat at a child care center in St. Varian. The county pays for that seat on the first of the month whether a child sits in it or not. By the next morning the seat is on the program's work list with its opening date and cost so far, next to the nearby families who could take it. The first eligible family gets an offer and has seven days to answer.

The program is the Marlow County Preschool Program. Marlow County, in the fictional state of Jefferson, exists only in this demo, and every family, provider, offer, and payment in it is generated.

Why does a preschool program fall behind?

Applications arrive every weekday, children leave seats during the year, offers expire, and providers confirm a placement days after the family accepted it. Three county files load each morning, and some of their rows match no record the program holds, so a person has to sort them out. The backlog is whatever has waited past its deadline. It grows when staff can't tell whether the next step belongs to the program, a family, or a provider.

How an empty seat gets filled

A seat opens when a child leaves or a provider reports a vacancy. It appears on the open seats work list with the date it opened, the days since, and what it has cost at the seat's contracted rate.
The program offers the seat to the first eligible family within 12 km. The family has seven days to answer.
The family accepts, and the seat waits on the provider to confirm the placement.
The provider confirms the placement, and the seat is filled.

On October 13, 2026, the demo date, the program has 6,753 contracted seats and 94 with no child in them. Of those, 23 have no offer out, and they cost $35,965 a month. The other 71 seats wait on a family's answer or a provider's confirmation.

The Open seats page of the Marlow County Preschool Program on October 13, 2026: 6,753 contracted, 6,659 filled, 94 not filled, 23 open with no offer out, $35,965 a month for the open seats, and 1,568 children waiting. A table of the 18 seats open longest, sorted by days open, each with its provider, town, age group, a status of Open, Offered, or Pending provider, the date it opened, cost to date, monthly rate, eligible families nearby, and the reason or next step. — The seats not filled on October 13, 2026, oldest first. The Status column says who has to act next: the program, a family, or a provider.

Seat P-1099-73 at St. Varian Child Care Center opened on September 1, 2026, and has cost $2,212 in its 42 days at $1,595 a month. Five offers have gone out for it: three families declined, one offer expired, and the program withdrew one. Its record lists the 71 eligible families within 12 km, with each family's town, distance, income band, home language, and days waiting. A button on each row sends the next offer.

The record for seat P-1099-73 at St. Varian Child Care Center, an Age 4 seat at $1,595 a month, status Open since September 1, 2026, 42 days open, $2,212 cost to date. Below it, a table of the 71 eligible families with town, distance, income band, home language, applied date, and days waiting, each with a Send offer button; the five earlier offers for the seat, three declined, one expired, and one withdrawn; an empty enrollment history; and one vacancy row. — One empty Age 4 seat, with the families within 12 km who could take it.

What open seats cost over the program year

The program year statement counts, month by month, the seats that opened, the seats filled, the seat-days that were open, and what those days cost. From July 1, 2026, to October 13 the program had 35,793 open seat-days that cost $1,834,261. The columns to the right run the same vacancies with no offers sent, filling at the rate seats filled before the program: 119,635 seat-days and $6,124,361, or $4,290,099 more.

The Program year 2026 to 27 statement as of October 13, 2026: $1,834,261 spent on open seats so far, $6,124,361 for the same vacancies without offers, $4,290,099 difference. A table by month from July 2026 to June 2027 with contracted seats, seats that opened, seats filled, average open seats, open seat-days, cost of open seats, the same vacancies without offers (average open seats, seat-days, and cost), and the difference; months after October are blank, and a year-to-date row shows 2,276 opened, 2,181 filled, 35,793 open seat-days at $1,834,261, 119,635 seat-days at $6,124,361 without offers, and a $4,290,099 difference. — The program year to October 13, 2026. The right-hand columns show the same vacancies if the program had sent no offers.

Education account applications go through the same records

The county also runs education accounts. On the demo date, 750 applications are open, grouped by what each one waits for: one document from the family (555 cases, the oldest 332 days), a school confirmation (66), two records that disagree (50), a probable duplicate (37), or a decision from a person (41). One more case is complete and routine. Each group shows its oldest case and its last action.

Staff work these cases in Stenodisc Manager, the same view the city's 311 staff use in the Tallmere case study.

The Education accounts page: 750 open, 164 cleared in the last seven days, $1,599,800 in awards issued, 91 with staff. A table of six groups by what each case is waiting for, with cases and the oldest in days: nothing, complete and routine, 1 and 33; one document from the family, 555 and 332; school confirmation, 66 and 50; two records that disagree, 50 and 49; probable duplicate, 37 and 33; a decision from a person, 41 and 32. Each row shows its last action on October 13, 2026 and a state of Routine, Working, With staff, or Held. — Education account cases grouped by what each one waits for, with the count and the oldest case in each group.

How the cost of open seats is counted

Each dashboard states its definition next to its figure and is computed from the prior day's files. Cost of open seats is the contracted rate of every seat for each day it had no child enrolled, counted by calendar month. On October 13, 2026, it shows $81,786 month to date and $1,834,261 year to date. That matches the program year statement because both read the same records.

The Cost of open seats dashboard, one of 14 in a list at the left. Its definition sentence reads: the contracted rate of every seat for each day it had no child enrolled, counted by calendar month. Four figures: $81,786 month to date, $1,834,261 year to date, $6,124,361 year to date without offers, $4,290,099 difference. A bar chart by month, July to October 2026, of the cost as it happened against the cost without offers, and the first rows of a breakdown table by provider, led by St. Varian Child Care Center at $146,689 year to date. — The cost of open seats dashboard, with its definition above the figures.

The rules the program follows

An offer expires seven days after the program sends it.
The program offers a seat to one family at a time.
The program matches a family to a seat within 12 km of home.
A status is one word from a fixed set. A seat is Open, Offered, Pending provider, or Filled.
Payments post on the first of the month and pay on the 15th.
A held payment names its reason.
A row in a county file that matches no record becomes an exception for a person to decide.

Run the program

Open the Marlow County demo. The demo starts on October 13, 2026. Its controls advance the clock or reset the generated records.

Test results

The demo's 13 tests pass. They check that the same seed builds the same program and that the pages agree with each other after the clock moves or an action is taken. They also check that every status comes from its fixed set and every dollar figure from a rate and a date.