Over 150 private child care facilities, mostly located in the poorest neighborhoods of our city, are being shut down because they do not meet the requirements set forth by stricter new fire safety regulations.

With the start of the academic year approaching, many working parents who had planned to send their children to these facilities are now urgently seeking new child care.

Yvonne Corion, the mother of two children, aged five and seven, is outraged that the Administration for Children and Families plans to shut down Shelley Samuel's private child care facility in Lefferts Garden, Brooklyn, where Corion's children have been cared for since the very first months of their lives.

Samuel was notified that her facility must be shut down because it is on the sixth floor of a residential building, one floor higher than permitted by the new regulations.

"Miss Samuel's facility is the only one that I know of in this area," said Corion, a Flatbush resident.

The changes that were introduced to the fire safety code in November 2005 have even stricter requirements for opening new child care facilities, which now cannot be located above the fourth floor.

Operators of child care facilities believe that the new regulations are unreasonable since they do not take the realities of city life into account.

"This is absurd," complained Sandra Robinson, who cares for six children in her Brooklyn home in Bedford-Stuyvesant and who is also a member of Families United for Racial and Economic Equality, an organization that is calling for an overhaul of the new regulations. "I have a large backyard, but it does not have an exit onto the street. This is why I received notice that the New York state will not renew my license."

The new regulations state that if a backyard or an adjacent alley is to be used for evacuation during a fire, then children must be led at least 50 feet away from the danger area.

Brian Marchetti, spokesman for the Administration for Children and Families, announced that since the introduction of the new regulations, 667 private child care facilities in the city have been inspected for compliance with fire safety requirements. Forty-one percent of these facilities were declared to be in compliance with the new regulations and 23 percent were shut down or are in the process of closing. The remaining 36 percent will remain open while "work is carried out," explained Marchetti.

Baychester resident Michele Khampi is lucky. Her neighbor has allowed her to construct a gate in the fence separating their backyards. This will provide Khampi with a second emergency exit onto the street through her neighbor's property. This "updating" cost her $500, but her center was not shut down.

Andrea Lugo, who has run a child care facility in Sunset Park for 16 years, has not been as lucky as Khampi. Her neighbors did not give her permission to build a similar gate. Lugo took legal action after receiving an order to close the center.

"But the judge wasn't interested," saif Lugo, shrugging. "A month later, I was notified that my license would not be renewed."