The Board of Education contest in Knox County’s 2nd District, which covers urban North Knoxville, is unusual in several ways.

District 2 leans Democratic, but it's hard to say how that plays out in a race with two independent candidates.

It is one of the few county races this year to feature an incumbent, Jennifer Owen, a retired teacher who is seeking a third term on the board. Owen is running as an independent, defying the partisan framework imposed on school boards by the state Legislature and local parties.

It is the only competitive county race this year with no Republican candidate on the ballot. Instead, Owen — typically one of the more progressive voices on the board — faces a challenge from a Democrat, parent Anne Templeton, and a Republican-leaning independent candidate, retired pastor Pat Polis.

The district overall leans Democratic in most elections. It is represented on County Commission by Democrat Courtney Durrett (who is also seeking reelection this year), and it overlaps with a significant portion of state House District 90, represented by Democratic Rep. Gloria Johnson.

But how that will play out in a race with an independent incumbent who has been elected twice in the district against a newcomer running with Democratic support is hard to know. In public candidate forums, Owen and Templeton have mostly expressed similar views on major issues, so it may come down to campaigning and name recognition. (Polis has not attended those forums.)

Through the end of March, Owen lagged far behind the other two candidates in fundraising. Templeton reported $13,235 in contributions, compared to $5,985 for Polis and $1,170 for Owen. Templeton and Polis both added to their totals in the second quarter: Templeton raised another $3,840 and had $10,002 on hand, while Polis reported $2,050 with $3,984 on hand. As of yesterday, Owen hadn’t yet reported her second quarter totals.

That’s not a new situation for Owen — she faced better-funded candidates in 2016 and 2020, and won both times. But those elections were nonpartisan, and she faced only one opponent in each. Owen has expressed disappointment that the Democratic Party is supporting a candidate against her, which she says they told her they wouldn’t do. Party officials have said it was unclear whether Owen was going to seek a third term.

A win by Templeton would give Democrats another seat on the nine-member board — they currently hold two — but because Owen typically votes on contentious issues with the Democratic minority, it wouldn’t necessarily change its political calculus. A win by Polis, whose contributors are mostly Republicans, probably would.

Here’s a look at the three contenders.

Jennifer Owen

Owen came onto the board in 2016 as part of a revolt among teachers, voters and some number of local officials against the leadership of former Superintendent Jim McIntyre. The wave of new members included many former educators — at its peak, six board members were former teachers or district employees.

The group was successful in forcing McIntyre out and hiring former Superintendent Bob Thomas to succeed him. For several years, many of the board’s more liberal and conservative members were united in supporting Thomas, questioning the state’s aggressive testing regimen and opposing school vouchers.

But the makeup shifted in succeeding elections. By the time it hired current Superintendent Jon Rysewyk in 2022, Owen was one of just three former teachers remaining. She is now the only educator left on the board.

“There's been, I think, a really concerted effort to take anyone with school experience off the board,” Owen, who worked for 23 years as a music teacher, said in an interview at Jacks Coffee on North Central Street. “If we look historically, there's always been someone who either has administrative experience or a great deal of experience and institutional knowledge. And when I look at our board, there's so much I have to explain to them from time to time about how things work.” 

Owen is among the more dogged board members in digging into the details of proposals and policies, asking often pointed questions of the administration and fellow board members. It has not necessarily endeared her to her colleagues, but she is unapologetic about her persistence.

“I think having the knowledge of what has happened (in the past), and the reasons for things, makes better decisions,” she said. 

That’s why she’s seeking a third four-year term. School board members are not term-limited, and Owen thinks her professional background and grasp of the district’s recent history gives her a valuable perspective. If she wins, she will become the board’s longest-serving member. (Fifth District representative Susan Horn has also served eight years, but she is not seeking reelection.)

 Owen said she has been disappointed with some of the changes on the board during the past four years. She opposed the change to partisan board elections, and she thinks it has infused the board with unnecessary levels of state and national politics.

 “I think (the board) has become much more divisive and partisan, which is really unfortunate,” she said. “I’m not sure how to drag that back to the middle somehow. We used to know kind of where people were, we knew what party people generally affiliated with, but it wasn’t part of our board discussions.”

 That has included the rupturing of what had been a longstanding board coalition against proposals for school vouchers — using public taxpayer money to pay for tuition at private and religious schools, which Gov. Bill Lee is attempting to turn into statewide policy. The board dropped opposition to vouchers from its legislative priority list two years ago, and the board’s current chair and vice chair — Betsy Henderson and Steve Triplett — are Republicans who have both publicly supported Lee’s plan.

 Owen remains adamantly against the idea.

 “It doesn’t represent the interests of the school system at all,” she said. “It baffles me how someone on a public school board could think that they are supporting public schools, when they support taking money away from public schools.”

She introduced a resolution this year seeking to join other school boards across the state in opposing Lee’s proposal, but it failed on a partisan vote, with all of the board’s Republicans voting against it.

She has joined other board members in expressing concerns about the state’s reading retention law, which places huge emphasis on third- and fourth-grade reading tests — and, critics say, misuses test data and creates unnecessary stress for students, parents and teachers.

Owen has also been one of the board’s most persistent skeptics of Rysewyk’s tenure. She was in the minority that initially voted against hiring him in 2022, proposing instead to start the search over. And she gave him the lowest score of the nine board members on his first annual evaluation.

“I feel like a lot of changes have happened just like the search did, they’ve happened very quickly,” she said of Rysewyk’s first two years. “And maybe without fully planning. I think the district could use a lot more intentionality when looking at things.” She cited the confusion among staff members about the district’s new salary schedule this year as an example.

In a third term, she said, she would continue to scrutinize proposals — whether state or local — for their actual impacts on students and teachers.

“I think there are lots of things that are very easy to get overlooked,” Owen said. “It makes it feel like I’m a troublemaker. But so often, they want to just do something without doing it in public, without anybody really looking at it.”

Pat Polis

The way Polis sees it, serving on the school board would give him the opportunity to bring his skills and knowledge to one more realm, after succeeding in several others.

At 77, he has been an Army officer, a business executive and a pastor. In elected office, he said, he would draw on what he learned in all three sectors.

“I see it as an opportunity to serve a community that I love very much,” Polis said, seated behind the desk in his office at WRJZ radio, the Christian talk and ministry station on Magnolia Avenue. “Two of my three children graduated from Whittle Springs Middle and Fulton High School. My son played football and my youngest daughter was senior class president and 2004 homecoming queen.”

His own experience with Knox County Schools as a parent was overwhelmingly positive. He said he wants to make sure other parents feel the same.

“I think because I have such a diverse background, I have the ability to be able to see things from a 30,000-foot perspective as well as ground level,” he said. “To me, the school — and this may be idealistic — should be an environment where we can provide the opportunity for every child to maximize their potential.”

Polis was born and grew up in Pittsburgh, Pa., the oldest of four children. All four of his grandparents had emigrated from Italy. The family didn’t have much money, and discipline was enforced with what he jokingly calls “the board of education” — a wooden paddle. “My father used to say, your brains have moved down into this part of your body, it's time to move them back up into your head,” he said with a laugh.

He was drafted into the Army in 1965, straight out of high school. He served eight years, including three combat tours in Vietnam. Along the way, he was promoted from private to captain. He also met his wife during this time. They have been married for 54 years and have three children and multiple grandchildren.

After the military, Polis spent 17 years in business, once again climbing the ranks until he was CEO of a $30 million-a-year company based in Chattanooga, which is what brought him to Tennessee. And then, in 1990, he left the business world and entered a seminary.

“I didn’t just wake one day and say, ‘I’m gonna leave this $100,000-a-year job and become a pastor,’” Polis said. “I had a very deep experience with God, and it changed the direction of my life.”

He served 28 years as a senior pastor with the United Methodist Church (well before its recent schism), with a special talent for revitalizing churches in decline. He stepped down from the pulpit in 2019 and now serves as a church consultant and radio talk show host. He is also active with military veterans, including conducting funeral services for unclaimed veterans.

At WRJZ, he has two regular programs — “Ministry Corner” and “The Church Mechanic” — and is the director of the station’s Christian Resource Center.

“My primary goal is to connect churches and ministries and businesses, basically to build a network,” he said. “You have to help people learn from each other.”

Polis said he was initially approached about running for school board as a Republican, which is where his political sympathies lie, but he didn’t want to be a partisan candidate.

“I said, ‘I just don’t think that children should be a political issue,’” he said. “Some things have to be above politics.”

He said the goal of the school system should be to prepare graduates for adult life — “Today’s children are tomorrow’s employees” — and too many of them are finishing school without adequate skills.

“We have schools in our school system that their proficiency level is very low,” Polis said. “And we have schools in our school system where the proficiency level is very high. Can somebody please tell me why?  If it's the same school system, and it's the same curriculum, and it's the same teachers, and it's the same processes and procedures, why is it that these children are at whatever percentage and these children are at a much higher percentage?”

He is a fan of Rysewyk and his emphasis on career preparation. As a board member, he said his goal would be to support the superintendent’s efforts while also holding him accountable.

On charter schools and vouchers, Polis said he supports parental choice but doesn’t think it should undermine funding for public schools.

“If we’re going to move toward charter schools, I don’t think the budget for that or the funding for that should come out of the school budget,” he said. “I don’t believe in robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

As for his religious background, he said he would not use a position on the school board to proselytize. (The board already has one pastor, Rev. John Butler, a Democrat.)

“Listen, I don’t care what color the kids are or what size they are,” Polis said. “What I care about is, are we doing everything we can to prepare them for life?”

Anne Templeton

Templeton is an involved parent and also a professional communicator — both qualities she thinks would be valuable on the school board.

“There's a lot to be done in our community to augment what's already positive happening,” she said in an interview at the Frothy Monkey coffee shop downtown. “I like to look at things through a glass-half-full view. I feel like that is a healthy way — how can we work together to do more, better.”

Templeton has a child at Beaumont Magnet Academy and another at St. Joseph Catholic School. She works as director of maker initiatives at the Maker City program, which is housed under the Knoxville Entrepreneur Center and promotes and supports the area’s artists, craftspeople and small-scale manufacturers.

She moved around a lot as a child, but primarily grew up in Miami, Fla., which she said gave her an appreciation for living in a diverse community. She came to Knoxville to attend the University of Tennessee, where she double-majored in history and political science. That put her on track to go to Washington, D.C., to work in the office of former Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist, but fate intervened in the form of a car accident.

“Shortly after graduation, I wrecked my car,” she said. “It was a dark and stormy night. I had a friend who was moving to London. And because I am the truest of middle children, I took the insurance money and moved to London.”

She found a job working in the marketing department of a children’s newspaper, organizing promotions and events. It put her on a career path in communications and marketing, and when she moved back to the U.S. after a year she landed at the newspaper publishing company Gannett. That led to marketing stints at newspapers in Hawaii and Indianapolis. (She earned an MBA at Indiana University while there.)

Then, while Templeton was on maternity leave, the company initiated one of its periodic restructurings. Rather than return to a reconfigured office, she decided it was a good time to return to Knoxville — a city she had missed since leaving, and that is conveniently located between assorted members of her and her husband’s families.

“I love Knoxville, I love the location of Knoxville, I am an outdoor person,” she said. “I have an affinity for mountains and exploration, and Knoxville provides all the outdoor enthusiast opportunities.”

The decision to run for school board came as an outgrowth of a long commitment to public service, she said. She has served as a PTA president and also volunteers with Meals on Wheels and on local nonprofit boards. 

She said she is running as a Democrat “because that’s where my values lie,” and that the party has provided valuable support for a first-time candidate. It has clearly helped with her fundraising, which includes a donation from Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincanon (who previously held the 2nd District school board seat herself.)

Templeton said she wasn’t running against Owen so much as to bring a new voice from the district.

“She’s been there for eight years, and I will not speak disparagingly of her,” she said of Owen. “I believe that it’s time for a new voice and a new method.”

She added, “My plan is to institute very much a boots on the ground kind of leadership. I want to have regular meetings with administrators, be open to teachers … And I think I bring a different skill set to the table to tackle some of the issues.”

Those issues include vouchers, which Templeton strongly opposes.

As a parent with one child in private school — at the recommendation of public school teachers, she said, who thought the smaller size would be beneficial — Templeton and her family would stand to gain from Lee’s voucher proposal. But she said that wasn’t a reason to support it.

“I think vouchers will defund our public schools, by definition,” she said. “From a social justice lens, that’s a travesty. The children on the fringes, the marginalized kids, will become more so. And we will not be able to sustain a healthy public education system.”

Within the district, she sees a need for accessibility improvements at some of the older buildings. “We need to look at our infrastructure,” she said. “The schools in District 2 are some of the oldest in the county.”

Templeton said she supports more funding for schools, both for salaries and supplies — she said teachers too often end up supplementing their classroom materials out of their own pockets.

She said she has heard “generally positive” comments about Rysewyk’s regional restructuring of the district from school employees, and his launching of career-focused “865 Academies” in high schools. 

“I appreciate trying new things,” she said. “And then we need to take a really good look at, ‘Is this working,  is this not working?’ and put benchmarks in place to make sure that we're evaluating and reevaluating and making adjustments when we need to do it.”