1,400 miss school amid threat rumors

WESTON · Hundreds of Cypress Bay High students stayed home from school Friday amid rumors about a hit list and a bomb threat. A 10th-grade student had been suspended from school three weeks ago after he turned in a paper to an English teacher that raised "red flags" to school administration.

A special-needs student was angry about how administration handled a bullying situation last year when he was a ninth-grader. The rumors about bombs or guns were unfounded. Fears arose Friday that the student would return to campus, although he did not. Of the two-campus high school's 5,300 students, more than 1,400 were absent on Friday, about 1,200 more than normal. The school did not put out a formal message to the school community to quell the growing rumors, instead preferring to answer the flood of phone calls and e-mails on an individual basis.

Source: Sun-Sentinel