She Nearly Quit High School Over the Cost of Books. A Texas School Now Has Her Name

Long before a Texas school board put her name on an elementary school, Marilyn Hampton nearly quit high school because she could not afford her books.³

Hampton, who worked 39 years as a custodian for Aubrey ISD, told that story on Oct. 21, moments after learning that the district’s Elementary School No. 5 would become Marilyn Hampton Elementary School.¹³ Aubrey ISD has since shared video from that night and the days after it with Hooray News and gave us permission to quote it. Our first story covered the naming.¹

The custodian job that kept her in school

“I wish Mr. Estes was alive and could see me now,” Hampton said as the meeting wound down. She said he was the one who helped her get a job as a custodian at the high school so she could finish.³

“When I went to Arkansas, the state didn’t provide the books, so I didn’t have any money,” she said. “So I was gonna quit, but I nearly knocked down the superintendent leaving.”³

The job interview was short. “He said, will you work? I said, I’ll do anything,” Hampton said.³

She did not plan to make a career of it. In a live Fox & Friends First interview on Oct. 30, she said a home economics teacher was going to help her attend a business college in Springfield, Missouri, and that she “did not intend to stay with Aubrey ISD that long.”⁴

The interviewer brought up that she had once said she felt like a failure for not going to college. Hampton said she kept the idea in the back of her mind for years. She also remembered paying $18 for a typing class, because in Arkansas “you had to pay for your elective.”⁴

“I was good at it,” she said. “But I’m glad I’m where I’m at.”⁴

A red carpet, with one maintenance task

Hampton went to the Oct. 21 board meeting expecting something else. “I thought I was there to talk about the legacy co-op that I’m a part of,” she told Fox.⁴

In the district’s video, the superintendent read through her career, starting on April 18, 1983, and called her “an educator without a classroom, a teacher without a formal degree and a cherished member of the Aubrey ISD family.”²

Then came the request. “I do have one maintenance task for you,” the superintendent said, before assuring a woman with 39 years of custodial experience that “this rug does not have any bodily fluids, vomit or anything.”² The rug was the red carpet with the school’s name on it.¹²

Asked on Fox why she thought the district did it, Hampton said, “Because they’re good people.” She put her own 39 years more simply.⁴

“I knew I loved the kids,” she said. “Everything I did was for the kids, my hallway kids.”⁴

What is next for Marilyn Hampton Elementary

On Oct. 29, Hampton toured the construction site.⁵ The project team walked her through renderings first: her name on the canopy over the front door, a tall entry hallway in Aubrey red and blue, spaces outside the classrooms for students to work together, and a railroad theme like the one at neighboring Owens Middle School.⁵

“I know hard work,” Hampton told the crew. “Thank you all for the tour.”⁵

A beam-signing is next. On the tour, the team said a beam will be painted white with the Aubrey logo and signed at the spot where the front door will be.⁵ The superintendent also promised ribbon cuttings and dedications, telling Hampton on the night of the reveal that “the road show starts today.”² The school is expected to open in August 2027.¹

Hampton has already issued her first instruction for the place. “It’s beautiful,” she said at the reveal. “Well, they better keep it clean. Because I will be watching.”²