Monday is the start of early voting in runoff elections for two trustee seats on the Dallas school board. Incumbent Leigh Ann Ellis deserves another term representing District 3, and Bernadette Nutall is the best candidate to succeed Ron Price in District 9.

While only a fraction of Dallas residents live in and are eligible to vote in these districts, the outcomes of these races are critical to the future of the Dallas Independent School District. DISD faces major financial and academic challenges, as well as a crisis of confidence in the eyes of many district residents. The board needs aggressive, motivated trustees who will confront these challenges constructively. While supportive of Superintendent Michael Hinojosa's academic initiatives, both candidates say he must show greater leadership to rebuild public trust – and that trustees should hold him accountable for results.

Ellis, 54, has laid out specific ideas for improving transparency and student achievement, with plans to make public more of the district's financial information and to better align instruction from elementary school through high school. She's the superior choice to retired video producer Bruce Parrott, 63, the husband of former board president Lois Parrott. He has mostly criticized the current trustees without offering solutions. In a second term, the low-keyed Ellis' experience and ideas should empower her to be a more assertive board leader.

Nutall, 43, wants the board to take a more conservative approach to budgeting and favors renegotiating vendor contracts to make sure the district is getting more "bang for the buck." Her extensive grass-roots involvement as a community schools liaison gives her essential firsthand knowledge of the district, unlike opponent Sally Cain, 54, who has worked as a federal education official and consultant.

Nutall, who runs Circle of Support, a summer learning program for kindergarteners through eighth-graders, should be a consensus builder on the board and a bridge between trustees, the superintendent and the community they serve.