For 40 years, the Canyon-Owyhee School Service Agency has provided small rural school districts with educational opportunities they could not offer on their own: professional-technical education, special education and an alternative high school.

Its programs always have been scattered among its far-flung districts, but now the agency is poised to create its own school, a Regional Technology Center.

The 55,687-square-foot building, expected to open next fall north of Wilder, will allow for expansion of professional-technical programs that prepare students for jobs in local industry and help them earn credits toward college degrees, said Mark Cotner, executive director of the Canyon-Owyhee School Service Agency. The school also will provide adult education opportunities through a pact with the College of Western Idaho, he said.

"This is a huge project for this area, and it will help attract new business," said Pat Engel of Sage Community Resources, the regional economic development organization that helped Canyon-Owyhee School Service Agency win the $2.5 million in federal stimulus funds for the project. "COSSA works directly with industry to design the training programs businesses need. It's a unique model. It's a gem."

On Saturday, officials will celebrate the U.S. Economic Development Administration grant that will bankroll half of the $5 million project. The rest will come from in-kind donations and funds from the five-member school districts - Homedale, Marsing, Notus, Parma and Wilder, Cotner said. The 17-acre site was donated by the Wilder School District, and R&M Steel will donate all the steel for the project.

Homedale and Notus voters passed supplemental tax levies last month to put up their districts' share, and Wilder and Parma have levy elections planned later this fall. Marsing School District's supplemental levy attempt fell short by just three votes on Aug. 25. Marsing Superintendent Harold Shockley said the school board is committed to supporting the project and will look at options for coming up with its share of the funding - $474,000 over two years.

"COSSA allows us to provide opportunities for our kids, and in many cases adults, that we could not possibly provide on our own," Shockley said. "It helps students gain the training to remain in our area and get pretty good jobs. We have graduates who start out at $25,000, $27,000, $30,000: That's not a huge wage, but for a high school graduate that's pretty good."

The program's application for stimulus funding cites an average starting salary for a COSSA technology school graduate of $27,419 in 2008. And Cotner proudly notes that the agency's professional-technical programs have a 96 percent job-placement rate.

The new building will allow expansion of professional-technical programs, but the direction and shape of new offerings "will depend on what local industry tells us they need," Cotner said. Over the years, he said, programs have been added or deleted as the area's business needs change.

"Even in agricultural processing now, you can no longer take people off the streets with no skills," Engel said. "Everything's technical now."

Slightly less than half of COSSA's graduates last year went on to college, while 51 percent joined the work force right after graduation, Cotner said. Some of the students did both, he said: taking jobs in their chosen industry to work their way through college.

The agency now offers seven professional-technical programs: industrial welding, certified nurse's aide, medical records, building trades, automated industrial engineering, automotive technician and diesel technician.

Rural Canyon and Owyhee school districts pooled their resources to create COSSA in 1969, providing professional-technical education programs. Special-education programs were added in the 1970s, and an alternative high school launched later. Special-education programs will be offered in the member districts' schools, but the alternative high school and vocational programs will be moved to the new building, Cotner said.

As COSSA prospers, so will the region, Engel said, noting that the agency's new building project dovetails nicely with another Sage Community Resources Project. Sage is conducting an economic feasibility study that aims to create new jobs along the 4-mile stretch of Idaho 19 between Wilder and Greenleaf, she said, and the COSSA campus is expected to help attract businesses.

"We're looking to build on the winning process that COSSA has," Engel said. "It's one of those uses that prepares for the economic upswing. We don't know when that will happen, but we need to prepare for it."

Kristin Rodine: 377-6447