HC implements new EOS program

For the new school year, HC has begun school-wide use of the Employability Operating System (EOS) as a way to track hall passes, student behavior, and important skills. Ryan McQueery is the lead developer of EOS and has worked closely with the implementation and updating of the EOS program.

“I started [working] at the Learning Center nine or ten years ago,” McQueery said. “We were using a system to track soft skills on excel sheets, and it wasn’t efficient. That was when we started building the online system.”

McQueery worked alongside other Learning Center employees to build the system in its basic form as a way to track skills important in employability, which are based on the HC DEVILS acronym (on time, appropriate use of electronics, team player, ready to work, appropriate interactions, on task). While Learning Center employees contributed to the start of the system, McQueery continued building the system in his free time.

“Originally it was the staff of the Learning Center,” McQueery said, “but all of the online development and coding was done by me in my spare time. I had summers and evenings and weekends off, which I spent working on it, because we wanted to have a more efficient system. The staff developed the framework together.”

McQueery and the Learning Center staff began the work solely for the Learning Center, but as the system grew, so did the number of schools that wanted to work with the system. 

“As we built it, other schools became interested,” McQueery said, “and were asking to get [their] hands on it, and how [they] can use it.”

McQueery began work ten years ago, and he has since gone through many different revisions of the system. He continues to allow schools to use this system while he works to improve it.

“It’s been a long time in the making,” McQueery said. “I’d say we are on version 10 now, and we will keep revising. The more complicated we made it, the worse it seemed to work, so we have tried to keep it simple and efficient.”

McQueery will continue to work on the system with Fayette County Public Schools.