In the fall, the FCPS staff proposed an idea to conduct up to three days of virtual instruction per year on snow days. The system has not yet decided how to implement a plan, but with the approval from the Maryland Department of Education, it should now proceed.

Virtual instruction, the district said, would be most useful when schools close for multiple days in a row because of significant snowstorms. Really bad storms are usually forecast several days in advance, which would allow the district to plan for the virtual snow days.

The school board first discussed the proposal at a meeting in October. The staff presented results from a survey of 2,300 people about the proposal. About two-thirds — 1,512 — supported the idea while 760 were opposed.

The staff said the opponents were primarily in two camps. Some did not like the idea of ending traditional snow days, when children are free from school and many spend the day playing outside in the snow. We have to admit the picture does have a rather nostalgic appeal.

Others said they were opposed to the district doing anything that resembled pandemic-era virtual learning.

That is a misguided reaction. Remote learning in which children attended class virtually from home during the pandemic was undoubtably harmful to some children. The test results show that many children did not adapt well to remote learning.

It is easy to say that the school system should have had children in school more, and less learning from home, or even not at all, because so few children died because of COVID-19. But when school leaders everywhere were flying blind in an unprecedented emergency, virtual learning was a realistic option.

In the case of the snow day plans, the choice is not to have children learning from home or attending school. The choice is between having some instruction virtually or nothing at all.

Students working at home can still enjoy the snow and the time away from school. Under asynchronous instruction, they can do their work at their own pace and their own schedule during the day.

Even though it is flawed, a virtual school day is better than nothing. So many children have fallen behind in school, they need all the help they can get, even if it is imperfect.

In a systemwide email, the district said that having students complete some work on a few snow days per year could “mitigate disruption to learning mid-year, minimize additional days at the end of the school year when instruction may be less meaningful and keep students connected.”

We agree. Now that the state has approved virtual learning during a weather emergency, the staff said it would present “an additional update” at the next board meeting on Jan. 11. We believe the staff should recommend a workable plan to provide virtual instruction to all children.

This is an opportunity to use a tool created for one kind of emergency and put it to use during another emergency.