As long-time Dorchester resident Lianne Hughes-Odom takes on her first leadership role this week on opening day at the small Oliver Wendell Holmes K-6 school, she brings no shortage of enthusiasm back to the community where she grew up.

Hughes-Odom, 34, said that while many in Dorchester grew up, got educated, and got out, she has instead been deliberate about returning to her home base after teaching stints elsewhere in the city.

“Being from the ‘hood and being from Dorchester, I felt it was my moral responsibility to come back to the place that raised me,” she said. “Some people go to school and leave the neighborhood – they get out. For me, every decision I made was to be able to come back to my community. I lived just two streets from here.”

A cursory internet search shows discouraging testing results for schools in Dorchester, but Hughes-Odom said she believes there is “brilliance in the block” that hasn’t been tapped into. The Holmes, which is located on School Street in the West of Washington neighborhood, seats approximately 300 students in grades K-6, and is about 97 percent students of color. Though testing scores are not where she would like, she predicted the school will rise above its challenges.

“Right now, I want to say publicly that the Holmes will be the greatest elementary school in Boston,” she said. “We’re just a work in progress. But I believe we can do something incredible in one of the Blackest and Brownest schools…We can tap into this brilliance and the staff here and the community here. Our overall community is so rich…The Holmes is a vibe.”

Hughes-Odom grew up in Boston, raised by a single mother – Paula Hughes – until she was 13. It was then that her mother married Boston Police Officer Cornell Paterson, who works with the Police K-9 unit and is also a well-known martial arts instructor, the founder of the East Coast School of Combined Martial Arts in Lower Mills. She attended the Eliot School in the North End until second grade, then switched to the Josiah Quincy Lower and Upper Schools through graduation. She attended Wheelock College, where she earned her undergraduate diploma, and UMass Boston for her master’s degree. She will finish her doctorate in education at the University of Pennsylvania in May.

She has previously taught at TechBoston Academy, Mario Umana Academy in East Boston, and was a learning principal at Boston Latin Academy and the Mozart School in Jamaica Plain last year.

“I’m Boston born, Dorchester raised, and I’m also a product of Boston Public Schools,” she proclaims. “I tell everyone I’ve been in BPS since I was five years old, except for three years when I worked for the Lewis Family Foundation.”

One of her biggest focuses will be on literacy and making sure that every student is a proficient reader. Other challenges include making sure the building and outdoor space reflect the excitement of the staff and students. In that vein, a schoolyard that hasn’t been improved since the 1990s got some momentum this summer in applying for a $1 million Community Preservation Act grant. There’s hope that will come through, and more capital improvements will follow.

“I feel we say Black and Brown lives matter but yet the physical spaces of buildings don’t reflect that,” she said, noting some kids have asked for simple things like swings.

To get to “greatness,” Hughes-Odom will lean on a huge “Rolodex” of community folks who have invested in her since she was a child, including Robert Lewis Jr., Big Sisters of Greater Boston, Michael Curry, Harriet Lewis, Mark Culliton, Jackie Jenkins Scott, Bak Fun Wong, the late Keith Love, and her Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority sisters.

She will also count on her in-laws. She is married to Tyrone Odom, the son of Ron and Kim Odom who are community activists, pastors, and co-leaders of the Redefining Our Community (ROC) neighborhood association in Dorchester.

“I married into a family that has deep roots and I have deep roots,” she said. “My mother-in-law, Kim, is an alumna of the Holmes. That just further deepens my why – why I do what I am doing.”

The result will hopefully be about changing the narrative of Dorchester and Mattapan students, and their community, starting this school term. “My leadership team – I feel we can re-shape that narrative,” she said. “My dad always says do something impossible and I feel like we can do the impossible here.”