Budget cuts could force Missouri's statewide virtual school to close midway through the academic year, leaving students with half-earned credits scrambling to complete their education.

Some students, just a few credits shy of graduation, could wind up as high school dropouts. Others, struggling with cancer, could miss their only chance to earn a degree.

The school in question is the Missouri Virtual Instruction Program, which offers internet-based courses for everyone from kindergartners to high school seniors. The online public school began just three years ago and already has served a few thousand students.

About half the children are taking courses to supplement their education in traditional public or private school classrooms. For the other half, the online school is their only school.

Gov. Jay Nixon announced last week that he was halting state funding for the online school's second semester as part of $204 million in budget cuts caused by declining state revenues. (See "Budget woes continue to plague education.")

The Democratic governor said students still could continue their courses if parents or local school districts paid the cost. But that's a big "if," considering many schools and families already are financially strapped because of the recent recession.

"What the governor has done is basically kicked those kids out of their school and removed the opportunity for them to take those classes," said Brian Baker, a Cass County commissioner who wrote the virtual-schools law as a Republican state legislator in 2006.

Missouri was in the middle of the pack nationally when lawmakers voted to create the publicly funded online school. Now, 35 states have state-led virtual schools or online programs, according to the International Association for K-12 Online Learning.

In Missouri, demand for the online courses has exceeded the supply of money from the state.

The online school grew from a $5.2 million program with more than 2,000 students in the 2007-08 academic year to a $5.8 million program with about 2,500 students in its second year, according to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Because of budget troubles, lawmakers already had scaled back the virtual school this year to a $4.8 million program serving 1,600 kids who enrolled on a first-come, first-served basis.

About 2,000 were turned away when the free slots filled up. A small percentage of them enrolled anyway after their parents or local school districts paid $325 per course, said Monica Beglau, executive director of the eMINTS National Center, a nonprofit business unit of the University of Missouri that runs the online school.

A majority of Missouri's online students are in high school, and many need just a few course credits to graduate, Beglau said.