By Jill Colvin

DOWNTOWN — The Department of Education has cautiously reopened the door to a plan that could alleviate overcrowding at a Kips Bay school.

P.S. 116, on East 33rd Street between Second and Third avenues, is currently at 120 percent capacity, according to advocates. To ease the strain, parents and elected officials want the city to start kindergarten classes for nearby P.S. 281, which isn’t scheduled to open until 2013, this fall so that some P.S. 116 students can go to school there.

Since no physical space yet exists for P.S. 281, which will open at East 35th Street and First Avenue, parents are eyeing the Meeth School on East 63rd Street between Second and Third avenues as a potential site for the so-called “incubation” school, which would house the classes temporarily, beginning this coming fall…

…State Sen. Liz Krueger said she thought incubation was a great model for every new school.”I would urge them to re-think that,” she said of the initial DOE rejection.