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When Mayor Bloomberg unveils his budget plan on Friday, there's going to be at least one big change from his earlier proposal. Many of the 16,000-plus child care slots on the chopping block will be spared.

Administration officials say the mayor is going to make sure that every child receiving subsidized care now will be able to stay in the program for another year.

It is a victory for advocates and members of the City Council, many of whom made restoring this funding a top priority.

Those child care slots aside, however, the budget the mayor presents on Friday is still expected to be full of cuts and layoffs. He has already called for closing 20 fire companies, a move that firefighters are strenuously opposing.

"If you cut 20 fire companies, people will die. People will die, the tax base will be diminished," said Alexander Hagan of the Uniformed Fire Officers' Association. "Not only that, a few years down the road, insurance premiums will go up. The people will pay, one way or the other, for this foolishness.

The union handed out these fliers Thursday, linking firefighters to September 11th rescue work.

Jim Riches, a retired deputy fire chief whose son was killed on September 11th, said now is not the time to cut.

"This is where they want to strike and if they're going to strike, they are going to do it now, right after we killed bin Laden," said Riches. "They want to attack back. The terror alert is very high. We think they should reconsider closing 20 fire houses. It's going to be suicidal.

The mayor's preliminary budget, announced in February, also included more than 4,600 teacher layoffs.

"We can argue about budgets and policies until the cows come home, but the demonization of teachers needs to stop now," said Manhattan Councilman Dan Garodnick.

On Thursday, parents and elected officials made one last push to save teacher jobs, holding protests in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island and the Bronx, on the eve of the mayor's budget address.

The demonstrators said it was unnecessary and unacceptable to lay off more than 4,600 teachers and shed even more through attrition.

"We're hoping with the rallying that we can convince the mayor how important it is to put the money back into education," said a protester in Downtown Manhattan. "We do understand that the budget is what it is, but I don't think at any time, we can stop remembering how important it is to educate our students."

"We've had enough of Mr. Bloomberg," said another protester. "Everything that he promised, it never happened, and so I'll be glad when Mr. Bloomberg is out of office."

The mayor has blamed the state and federal government for the proposed reductions. He recently took that idea one step further, suggesting that budget protests should not be aimed at City Hall, but at Albany and Washington.