By Matt Gleckman

The rumor at last week’s school board meeting, according to Re-1 superintendent Bill Thompson, was that a Southwest Open School student threatened to "carve his initials" into a female student’s chest after flashing a knife at her.

Rumors in high school however, have a way of spreading and transforming faster than forest fire in July.

"The students may have blown the story out of proportion a little bit," said Thompson several days later. "I think that it was more a case of the student saying ‘hey look at what I’ve got.’ It was certainly a safety issue though."

The unidentified student, a freshman at Southwest Open, was removed from the school last month by the Colorado Division of Youth Services (DYS) for a violation to his probation following the incident.

According to Southwest Open principal Jean Lovelace, the student has not yet been expelled but was given a "denial of readmission" and must appear before Thompson or the school board for an expulsion hearing before being allowed back into the school.

The juvenile missed his initial expulsion hearing because he is temporarily being held at the DYS facility.

Admission back into school this year for the student seems to be an unlikely event given the school’s no tolerance weapons policy.

"This particular student has had a lot of difficulties in the other schools that he has attended and he has bounced back and forth from one to another," said Lovelace.

Thompson confirmed the fact, stating that the young man was previously removed from the middle school for another weapons violation after he brought a baseball bat with him to a high school football game.

The superintendent also reported that this was the second knife violation this year.

The other violation occurred when a middle school student was caught on the school premises with a butterfly knife, a weapon which is illegal in Colorado and several other states.