MIAMI – School officials in the Miami-Dade county school system are asking for additional federal funds to help educate a wave of young children smuggled into Florida from Central America.

The school board will ask the federal government to provide $1,950 per student above state funding toward costs to educate hundreds of students flooding into the district, CBS reports.

The children, who are currently living in local shelters, are creating a “crisis” that school leaders must address before school starts in the fall, officials said. Some of the children have crossed into Florida, but many were transferred to local shelters from other states by the government, Imagine2050 reports.

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“We have received about 300 students from Honduras over the past few months so recognizing the challenge, that crisis, we’re asking (the federal government) to intervene,” Miami-Dade Superintendent Alberto Carvalho told school board members at a recent meeting, according to CBS.

The issue, however, is much bigger than one Florida school district.

“In the past nine months 50,000 unaccompanied children immigrants have crossed our borders with smugglers who know they can cash in on kids who receive much more lenient consideration at the border,” CBS reports. “The children are in Texas, California, Arizona and in three local South Florida shelters.”

Florida state representatives Manny Diaz and Jose Felix Diaz are also backing the superintendent’s call for more cash.

“I think we’ve seen this before … with the rafter crisis and Haitian community … another wave where we (had) a wave of immigrants and the super is doing the right thing,” Manny Diaz said.

“It’s unsustainable and unless the feds step in, we are going to find ourselves in a very big crisis,” Jose Felex Diaz told CBS.

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While the massive influx of immigrant children is definitely concerning, the lack of a long-term plan to address what’s become a repeating issue is equally troublesome. Local officials clearly want to help the students who have already made their way to U.S. shores, but there must also be discussions about how to stop the problem from continuing in the future.

If Miami-Dade officials are serious about addressing the flood of illegal immigrant children, they should pressure federal lawmakers to not only cough up extra cash to help those who are already here, but also to devise a plan to prevent the situation from becoming a “crisis” next year.

Finding a permanent solution, however, will require lawmakers to stand up to the country’s teachers unions and other politically powerful Big Labor officials who would prefer to welcome additional students – and additional federal funds “needed” to educate them – to public schools.

Because in the world of organized labor, increased spending equals increased union membership and dues revenue, regardless of how it impacts public services or the immigrants themselves.