After 16 years as principal of Woolwich Central School, Tom Soule still enjoys coming to work every day.

That's why he's retiring.

“I didn't want to get to a point when I dreaded coming to school, and I wasn't (at that point), at all. So it's a good time to leave,” said Soule, 63.

He might have left a couple years sooner, but he wanted to see the school through its first couple of years in its new building that opened in 2012.

Everyone's handling of that change made him proud, he said. The school's classes were held for two years at Huse School in Bath, while the old building was torn down and the new one built.

“And I never heard one staff member complain,” Soule said.

The hardest part of retiring will be leaving the school's wonderful staff and students, he said. Woolwich Central serves pre-Kindergarten through eighth grade.

Fifth grade teacher Mary Moran, a longtime teacher at the school, has mixed feelings about Soule's departure.

“Just apprehensive, because we have a really good culture that he's established. It takes a special person to make that, and that's something you can't replace,” Moran said.

“But we're excited for him because he deserves it,” she added.

The Bowdoinham man started his career teaching in Wales, Maine, in 1972. He took the Woolwich principal's job after holding a series of other principal's positions, in towns including Gardiner, Litchfield, Washington and Friendship.

One of the biggest changes he's seen in education over the decades has been the shift from having each teacher decide what to teach, to instead having a uniform curriculum.

“That's been controversial. But I do think having standards for what kids should know is very important,” he said.

Soule will stay through the end of this school year and into early summer, then leave his longtime job.

After that, he has no big plans. Retirement is like closing one book and opening another, he said.

“I'm not sure what's on the pages yet.”