As an eighth-grader at Hastings Middle School, Mikayla Zeien was not looking forward to high school. She had been picked on by her classmates enough to disrupt her education, and the prospect of continuing into high school with the same kids was not an appealing one.

So she started doing some research on online high schools. A friend of her sister’s recommended one called Insight School of Minnesota.

“It seemed like a perfect fit,” Mikayla said.

She’s not the only one who thinks so. Attendance at online high schools is growing in Minnesota. According to “Keeping Pace with K-12 Online Learning,” Minnesota enrollment in online high schools increased by 47 percent in the 2009-2010 school year, with a total of 86,495 students signing into virtual classrooms.

Mikayla wanted to start her online high school right at the beginning of the year, but hadn’t started her research early enough, she explained. So she spent the first few days of her freshman year at Hastings High School and then switched over to Insight around the middle of September.