Request By:
Mr. Ray Carmichael
Editor
The Mirror
Somerset Community College
Somerset, Kentucky 42501
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Carl Miller, Assistant Attorney General
You have requested an opinion of the Attorney General concerning the applicability of the Kentucky Open Records Law, KRS 61.870-61.884, to certain records in the custody of the Somerset Community College. The documents in question are described as containing the names of all members of the faculty and the numerical rating each of them received as result of a recent evaluation procedure. You state that the ratings were based largely on input derived from student evaluation instruments and the ratings were used as the basis for merit raises, paid for by the taxpayers of the State of Kentucky. You further state that the Director of the college rates each teacher and the administrators. A rating of ONE means that the individual is Outstanding; TWO has the label of Good; THREE is Satisfactory; and FOUR is Marginal. You further state that each higher rating above Satisfactory means a $150 increase in the merit increment received. Based on this statement of the facts we offer the following observations on the law.
The Somerset Community College is an agency under the control of the Board of Trustees of the University of Kentucky. It is therefore a public agency within the definition of the Kentucky Open Records Law, KRS 61.870(1). This means that all of its records are open for public inspection unless they are exempt by a specific statute or by one of the exemptions provided in KRS 61.878. For example, student academic records are made confidential by KRS 164.283, and this office has said that evaluations of the faculty made by faculty peers, supervisors, and administrators are exempt under KRS 61.878(1)(a) because they contain information of a personal nature where the public disclosure thereof would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. The privacy which we believe is protected is that of the persons who have made the evaluation. In such cases the person who makes the evaluation is identified and makes the evaluation with the understanding that his evaluation will be kept confidential.
In our phone conversation you said that the evaluation made by students is made anonymously. We question the fairness and value of an anonymous evaluation of a teacher by a student and do not want to compound the unfairness by saying that the evaluation should be made public. We believe that to open the results of such anonymous evaluations to the public would be an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy as exempted by KRS 61.878(1)(a).