Knox County’s 1st District contains many of the school system’s most academically and socioeconomically challenged schools. It is also the most racially and ethnically diverse district, with slightly more than half the residents being nonwhite.

Both candidates ran unsuccessfully for the District 1 school board seat in 2022.

The district stretches through the heart of the county on an east-west axis and includes East Knoxville, Downtown, Mechanicsville, Lonsdale, West View, Marble City, Pond Gap and Middlebrook Heights. 

District 1 has been represented by Black school-board members for decades, and this year’s school-board race will not change that — both general-election candidates are African Americans. The district also historically votes Democratic.

Breyauna Holloway’s victory over incumbent Rev. John Butler in the Democratic primary surprised many observers. She garnered 48.5 percent of the vote in a three-way contest, outpolling Butler by nearly 15 percentage points. She is facing Charles Frazier, who was unopposed in the Republican primary.

This is the second run for the seat for both candidates. Holloway lost to Butler as an independent in 2022. Frazier, who has switched parties, has lost contests in four elections since 2017 — City Council (in 2017 and 2025), County Commission (as a Republican in 2024) and the District 1 school-board seat (as a Democrat in the 2022 primary to Butler).

District 1 candidates have tended to rely more on their community networks than on raising money to reach voters, and this year is no exception. Frazier’s campaign has been mostly self-funded with $1,570 in loans. His largest donation was $500 from the Knox County Republican Party. Holloway raised $260 through the entire campaign.

Frazier gave an interview for this article, while Holloway’s profile is a revised version of our primary coverage.

Charles Frazier

Charles Frazier says representing Knox County’s 1st District on the school board comes down to one thing above all: being in tune with the people who live there.

“I am very in tune to this district, to the people, and I am extremely involved and promote the community,” he said. 

He pointed to his reach as a local content creator, citing page views as evidence that he understands the community’s needs. 

“I don’t get those views without knowing the pulse of the community.”

Frazier, 70, is a lifelong Knox Countian. He attended a segregated school through the fourth grade before transitioning to Austin-East, where he discovered communications and landed a job at WBIR-TV while still in high school after a program director visited his class. He went on to spend two and a half decades in public television as a producer, director and on-air personality. He has broadcast Austin-East football games on Black-owned WJBE AM/FM for 13 years alongside co-host Rick Staples. 

His family also ran Frazier’s Barbecue, which his father operated for more than three decades. He has two sons and a daughter, all of whom came up through Knox County Schools.

Frazier later taught sixth-grade English at Vine Middle School, an experience he said shaped how he thinks about the classroom. 

“I got to see the reward of having students leave to say, ‘Thanks, Mr. Frazier,’” he said, though he was candid about the limits of that experience: “I am two or three drops in the cup. I don’t have all the answers.”

Frazier has run for public office multiple times over numerous years and said this run for school board was driven by what he sees as the district’s most pressing issue — failing grades in the district’s schools. 

“We have to get parental involvement, increase our PTAs,” he said. “That prompted me, because of my relationships with so many people in the community, to try to improve our educational arm of our community.”

On the County Commission’s decision to redirect money from the schools budget that had already been approved to help fund county-employee raises, Frazier said he wouldn’t approach the relationship as adversarial. 

“I don’t think that word ‘pushback’ would be any way to advance any process,” he said, calling the $4 million cut “very, very unfortunate.” He said his approach would instead be to build relationships with the mayor and commissioners and hold them to their funding commitments. 

“Communication, again, brings about understanding,” he said. “Let’s have some discussion, and let’s make sure that when you allocate a certain amount of money, you don’t back up on that.”

Frazier said that Tennessee’s ranking nationally in per-student education funding needs to change and that lawmakers should treat education as a higher priority than other state spending. 

“We don’t want our legislators and our government to think it’s more important to build a prison than increasing the allocation for education,” he said.

On vouchers, Frazier took a more measured position, noting that voucher amounts don’t cover full tuition at most private schools. 

“I don’t think that it’s going to take away very much more than it has from our district,” he said, though he acknowledged that some of the district’s top athletes have already left for voucher-funded private schools. He said there’s value in what public schools can learn from private ones but drew a line at public money subsidizing private tuition.

“There’s something wrong, in my view, when you take taxpayer and public money and make that contribution to people in a voucher program.”

Frazier said he publicly opposed this spring’s decision to pull Roots from library shelves, posting his objection to his Facebook following, regardless of political cost. 

“I made that stand because it was important to me,” he said. “Reading is a key to being successful.”

If elected, Frazier said, his top priorities would be school safety, ensuring every school has adequate working materials and supporting efforts to recruit and retain teachers. He also said he plans to go on a “listening tour” of the district’s schools to meet with principals, teachers and students directly.

Breyauna Holloway

Holloway has spent her life inside District 1 schools as a student, a parent and a community advocate, and now she’s looking to turn that lived experience into action.

The 41-year-old entrepreneur and Knoxville native is running for the District 1 school-board seat, positioning herself as both a product of the system and a parent actively navigating it in real time.

“I started at Sarah Moore Greene and graduated from Austin-East. I’m a third-generation graduate of Austin-East, and now my children are continuing that legacy,” Holloway said.

All five of Holloway’s children attend or have attended District 1 schools, with her oldest children becoming fourth-generation Austin-East graduates.

“Everything that happens within Knox County Schools directly impacts my household,” she said. “This isn’t just policy to me, this is personal. I’m living it every day as a parent.”

Holloway earned her bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of Tennessee with a concentration in criminal justice and a minor in African and African American Studies before going on to receive a master’s degree in criminal justice from Purdue University Online. She has also been civically engaged in East Knoxville, having served as a recreational cheerleading coach and Neighborhood  Advisory  Council  representative.

“I’ve proven myself consistently over the years to be visible and active in this community,” Holloway said. “I’ve spoken out on issues from housing to education to economic development. I’ve been on boards, committees, and I’ve made it my mission to keep people informed about what’s happening in our community.”

That commitment to informing and engaging residents, she says, is central to her approach to leadership.

Holloway describes herself as a communicator first, someone who prioritizes making information accessible and ensuring community voices are not only heard, but also acted upon. 

“People know they can come to me, and I’m going to tell them what’s going on, not just what they want to hear,” she said.

Holloway said she has a desire to be directly involved in shaping change within the district.

“The reason I’m running is because of my children,” she said. “I want to be part of the change in Knox County Schools, especially in District 1.”

Among the most pressing issues she identifies are funding and resource gaps in District 1 schools.

“The biggest issue right now is the lack of funding, especially in District 1,” Holloway said. “You’re seeing teacher and staff shortages, and the people who are still there are stretched thin. They’re dealing with larger workloads, more stress and less support.”

She also points to the impact of trauma and socioeconomic challenges on student behavior and learning.

“There are a lot of behavioral issues in the schools, but there’s also a lot of trauma tied to what students are dealing with at home,” she said. “Teachers don’t have enough support-staff counselors, behavioral specialists, therapists, to really address those needs, and that takes away from their ability to teach.”

As a parent of a student with disabilities, Holloway says she has seen those gaps firsthand.

“I’m right in the middle of it,” she said. “I’ve seen how mental health, stress and lack of resources impact not just students, but teachers and administrators, too.”

She also acknowledges why some families are choosing alternatives to traditional public schools, even as she remains firmly committed to strengthening them.

“I understand why parents are looking at private or charter schools,” Holloway said. “But my focus is on making sure our public schools are where they need to be academically and structurally. I want District 1 schools to be a place where parents feel proud to send their children, instead of feeling like they have to look elsewhere.”

On vouchers, she is unequivocal.

“I do not support public funding going to private schools, especially when our schools are already being shortchanged,” she said.

Holloway has also been outspoken about the district’s plan to consolidate several schools into a new K-8 campus in the Beaumont area, raising concerns about both the process and the impact on the community. She currently has a child attending Maynard Elementary, which is set to close upon the opening of the new school.

“I’ve been advocating for years for a middle school in that area,” she said. “But not at the expense of closing neighborhood schools, especially historically Black schools like Maynard. Those schools are part of the fabric of the community.”

She argues that smaller, community-based schools offer benefits such as strong relationships between teachers and families that larger, consolidated campuses may struggle to replicate.

For Holloway, the campaign is ultimately about trust and accountability.

“I’m someone this community can trust to advocate for them,” she said. “I’ve been doing the work, and I’m going to continue doing the work in making sure people are informed, involved and represented in the decisions that impact their children.”