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FOXBORO - The Taylor Tree of Thoughtfulness is about to lose its main branch.

Principal Kaye Naylor, 71, the longest-serving current staff member in Foxboro schools, plans to retire on June 30. She is in her 47th year in education, her 43rd year in Foxboro schools. School officials outlined plans last week to seek her replacement.

Naylor taught reading and first grade in Foxboro for 30 years and has been a principal at Taylor Elementary School for the past 12 years.

"I just feel that my time has come," she said.

Naylor came to Foxboro in 1965 as a first-grade teacher at Robinson Hill School. She was hired by then superintendent William Glynn, when Naylor - who holds bachelor's and master's degrees from Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy - was teaching in Camarillo, Calif. All the interviewing was done by phone, she said. The late Ruston Lodi, who was principal of Robinson Hill, put all of the students who had been held back the previous year - seven students - in her class of 32 first graders.

"They were unbelievably misbehaved," she said of some of the kids in her first class.

Naylor found plenty of activities to absorb the attention of her students.

She arranged her classroom desks in groups instead of rows, which initially raised eyebrows. Her class built a ceiling-high dinosaur. She brought in an incubator so that children could see chicks hatching.

Asked her educational philosophy, Naylor said: "To treat children the way I was treated, or the way I wish I was treated."

She said Lodi gave her the more challenging students - the "repeaters" - to test her and see what she was made of.

"I can honestly say that I have always enjoyed my profession and have come to school every day with a smile on my face," she wrote Feb. 28 in letters notifying superintendent Chris Martes and Taylor School parents of her plan to retire.

A poster on the wall behind her desk says, "Attitude is the mind's paintbrush - it can color any situation."

"I have my health, my happiness and a great attitude - that's thanks to the paintbrush of my mind," Naylor said. "It colors everything."

And those Three R's of the Taylor School logo are now among the leaves on the Taylor Tree of Thoughtfulness, a mural by parent volunteer and lunchroom monitor Kathy Manson, that adorns the school lobby. Over the past 43 years, Naylor said, she has not missed a Foxboro High School graduation and - though not a Catholic, herself - goes to St. Mary's Church to witness the Holy Communion of each of her students and sends each of the communicants a card.

She personally writes on the report cards of all the Taylor students. The school currently has 346 students in grades k-4.

"I felt that I'm an extension of their lives," she said.

Now that Naylor is leaving, she said she doesn't expect much fanfare.

"To quote General Douglas MacArthur, 'Old soldiers never die, they just fade away,' and on June 20th, when the students leave, I want to fade away with the memories of all the children I've interacted with over the last 47 years."