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If the Administration for Children’s Services gets its way, the City’s day care centers will soon be funded based on how many children they actually serve and not on their budgeted capacity.

This new funding formula, the next phase of ACS’s “Project Full Enrollment,” is scheduled to launch early next year. It’s a model that’s drawing intense opposition from both union leaders and City Council members who claim it will lead to rampant closures, especially in the outer boroughs.

“Queens public day care centers are not close together. If these centers close that would mean that entire community would not be able to have access to public day care that would be convenient to parents,” G. L. Tyler, political action director for AFSCME - District Council 1707, said. “That’s a serious issue to us. It destabilizes public childcare as we know it.”

At rally after rally and demonstration after demonstration, Neal Tepel has made the case for full-funding.

“Like Head Start and UPK, there is no way that day care centers can survive unless they are fully funded to cover their fixed costs for staff and facilities,” Tepel, the assistant to the executive director for District Council 1707 AFSCME, said.

Brian Simon, chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-Jamaica) and 2009 City Council candidate, joined Tepel in protest.

“I was a Head Start baby,” Simon, 27, said. “If not for my mother and grandmother having the right kind of foresight, the question can only be, ‘where would I be?’ So I’m fortunate and blessed in that fact and I don’t want my experience to be an exclusive experience.”

Simon, who lives and works in Southeast Queens, said the need for centers is apparent.

“When I look at my neighborhood, being an executive director to a member of congress, I see firsthand the need for more day care centers.”

According to a June 2008 ACS study, however, some existing ACS facilities in Queens are underutilized.

“Clearly, the current system for subsidizing contracted care creates a disincentive to achieving full enrollment,” the study reads in part. “In an era of scarce federal, stare, and city resources, it is critical that Children’s Services ensures that every spot is filled with an eligible child.”

The ACS did identify one Queens area – Woodside/Elmhurst/Corona – where demand exceeds what is available. Simon expects this will become a trend.

“We’re going to have an influx of a million more people,” he said. “There’s going to be families, there’s going to be babies. How are you going to cut day care centers if you’re trying to prepare a city to receive an influx of a million? To me that’s a little mind boggling.”

The City Council is scheduled to vote on two separate resolutions that would postpone Project Full Enrollment. Councilman Bill de Blasio (D-Brooklyn) introduced Resolution No. 1415, which would require ACS to report to the City Council with “tangible stated goals before implementing the untested and unsubstantiated Project Full Enrollment Initiative which threatens many viable public day care centers.”

And Councilwomen Diana Reyna and Letitia James – two democrats from Brooklyn – introduced Resolution No. 1420, which “calls upon the Bloomberg Administration to place a moratorium on the implementation of ACS’s unproven Project Full Enrollment Initiative.”

ACS remains committed to the initiative and has already contributed $2 million toward training and technical assistance that would strengthen existing centers. In addition, ACS plans to roll out several Web-based programs intended to streamline enrollment and attendance procedures.