The State Agency requires child development centers, outside-school-hours care centers*, and adult day care centers to maintain a Master Enrollment List (MEL) to facilitate the transfer of enrollment and eligibility information from the Income Eligibility Statements (IES) to the claim. Without the MEL, it is extremely difficult to ensure accurate counting and claiming.

*Approved at-risk afterschool meal program participants do not need to maintain enrollment records for this component of the CACFP. However, if any at-risk afterschool meal program participants also receive breakfast before school or participate in the child care program during the summer, an IES must be obtained for such participants, and they must be included on the MEL.

The MEL should accurately reflect enrollment records and attendance for the claim month. A participant who enrolls and attends at any point during the claim period, even one day, should be included on the MEL. If a participant terminated prior to the beginning of the claim period, that person should not be included on the MEL for that month. The names on the MEL should clearly match other records.  

The MEL can be maintained as a handwritten/hard copy document, a Microsoft Word document, a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, or, with prior approval, some other format (such as a child care management software program).  

There must be a separate MEL for each month claimed. If maintaining the MEL electronically, do not continuously update the same file from month to month – you will lose important data. Save each month as a separate file or Excel spreadsheet tab. However, it is not necessary to print the MEL for each month.

Choose the template that works best for your organization. If using the Excel spreadsheets, the instructions will be especially helpful.