Nine Denver Public Schools with unused space may be sharing facilities with new schools next fall.

DPS leaders have been talking about locating new schools in existing buildings for more than a year to relieve the financial burden of operating a district with more than 20,000 empty seats.

But it is only in recent weeks, as new school applicants have begun to tour buildings for possible sites, that space-sharing has sparked outrage. The schools with available space include four of the city's neighborhood high schools and five of its traditional middle schools.

"It's not likely all of the schools will see co-location in the coming year," said DPS Superintendent Michael Bennet.

Bennet confirmed the accuracy of the list obtained by the Rocky. DPS had not previously released the names of the candidates.

At the top of the list is West High School, now half-empty, with as many as 1,100 available seats and 44 vacant classrooms.

"Why West? Why do they keep taking from West?" asked Norma Salas, a West alumna who has children at West and Rishel Middle School, which is also on the list.

"They're saying we've got to fill up the space, but we had kids at West and they left," said Salas, referring to DPS' earlier decision to move the popular Center for International Studies program from West into its own building.

Parents at West, Rishel, Smiley Middle School and Lake Middle School say they were caught off guard by the tours. DPS gave them no notice their schools were being considered for space-sharing, they said.

"We haven't been told anything from anybody, we've just heard through the grapevine," said Salas, a member of West's parent advisory council. "We questioned the principal and he said he wasn't at liberty to say anything because he didn't know what was going on."

Some DPS board members on Monday also called for more community input. Bennet said Tuesday that the district will hold community meetings around the schools on the list but said a schedule has not been confirmed.

"It is clear that we need to have a conversation in the potentially affected school communities," he said. "The fear of the unknown . . . creates a lot of nervousness."

Bennet said he would prefer a more specific conversation about which new schools might go into which existing schools but added, "We simply don't have that yet."

That is not expected to be released until Nov. 13, with a school board vote expected Nov. 20.

District staff members are still working out issues such as, is the new school program compatible with the existing school? Will the new program serve an unmet need in the neighborhood?

DPS board members already have approved two new schools for fall 2009 and will hear from 10 more applicants on Thursday. Most are charter schools.

Some new school applicants received the list of possible space- sharing sites weeks ago. Since then, Bennet said, one school, Doull Elementary, has been removed from the list.

But one new school applicant, Beverly Lumumba, said she did not receive a list and was told to "scout" out a location. She was disappointed Tuesday to hear that her top preference, Manual High School, was not on the list.

She and others in the Manual community want to create East Denver College Prep as a top-performing K-8 school feeding into the historic high school.