I either brought my own lunch, or went home for lunch. I can only remember buying a school lunch a few times; no memory of what it cost. I do remember milk costs 6 cents a carton. The alternative was lemonade, which cost a dime, or a water fountain.
Lunch in the district I now live in is $3.45 for elementary school, $3.60 for high school.
Hijack, sorry, but for your amusement here is a week’s menu of (free) school lunches in a French public school in 2022.
I lived for several months in the Perigord region of France in 2010, with colleagues who had school-age kids, and was gobsmacked to see that they were getting serious French cuisine (nothing fancy or expensive, but good bonne femme style from quality local ingredients) in the school cafeteria. Vive la France!
Nope. Mine did too. In fact, my elementary school (1960s) had no lunchroom of any sort; you were expected to go home for lunch. The few kids who had to have lunch at school could use the all-purpose room.
At middle school, you were expected to bring a lunch. It actually had a cafeteria that sold milk and juice, and soup, all to complement your bagged lunch; but no meals.
High school (1970s) had a cafeteria where you could get meals, but I rarely ate there. Why? Because my house was a block or so away, and I could go home and eat what I wanted, rather than the school’s daily special. Reheated pizza and Coke? Deli sandwich? Leftover homemade chili? All a damn sight better than the sad-looking food for sale in the school caf. Anyway, the few times I ate there, I think the standard lunch was about $2, payable in cash. Add milk or juice, and it would have run to maybe $2.25 or so.
Me too for my elementary school sending everybody home for lunch. Since I lived a half-mile from the school a lot of lunch time was used up just walking back and forth. I envied the kid who lived literally across the street from the school.
High school didn’t sell lunches either in those mid-60s, but it took in too large an area to send people home. White milk was 3 cents and chocolate milk was 4 cents. My one extravagance was spending the extra penny for chocolate.
In elementary school (late 70s, early 80s), I want to say it was around 50¢. You were supposed to buy tickets ahead of time and hand in your ticket half in the morning then redeem the other half for your lunch. You could technically pay cash but they’d complain each time since they were preparing lunches to meet the number of morning tickets.
In junior high/middle school (mid 80s), I want to say it was 65¢. We had a shake and nachos stand as well and you could get one of each for 50¢ total. I ate a lot of “lunches” of a chocolate shake and a side of nachos in those days because it was cheaper than a real lunch.
High school (late 80s) was all cash with multiple lines for burgers, pizza, hot dogs and whatever the daily rotating entree was. Plus a salad bar and some various fruit and snacks. You paid for what you grabbed rather than any flat pricing.
I always loved the aroma of food cooking at school, wafting down hallways.
My sibs told me it never tasted as good as it smelled.
I’m amazed at the memories some of you folks have. I have practically no recollection of school lunches, either elementary school or high school. Nothing. Just a very dim recollection of little cartons of milk with straws in some very early grade, but I have absolutely no recollection if it was provided free or how it was paid for. In high school I’m sure we had a cafeteria, but I have no memories of that whatsoever. The elementary school I attended was just a block from our house so I may very well have gone home for lunch, but the high school was some distance away. I remember nothing!
I brown bagged until high school, which would be late 80s/early 90s. IIRC, school lunch in highschool was still cafeteria style, with whatever they’d slop on your tray, well, at least at my southern NM public school, and around $1.25 for the lunch. I do recall by the time my brother attended, two years later it was up to $1.50. I generally just took the money for lunch and pocketed it - I’d try to get a bag of popcorn for a quarter from whatever school group was doing a fundraiser most days, and that would be fine, and have a snack when I got home. Back then, my folks insisted on breakfast, and I normally still felt pretty full around lunch.
Plus, that way I got nearly $5 a week that I could spend on books or gaming supplies! Much bigger priority!
Just a quick reference, but shows I was probably on the cheap end of the spectrum for the late 80s, but much more in line with the average after the bump in price I mentioned above.
This matches my (admittedly possibly faulty) memory of kindergarten, which was half-day so we didn’t get lunch but we did get a milk break. Once I got to first grade, lunch was 40¢. (This would have been in the 70s.)
Montreal 1950s-1960s - elementary school (500 students) - EVERYONE went home for lunch. Even most of the teachers lived within walking distance.
High school (900 or so students) - almost everyone went home for lunch (except a special group of about 50 students who took a half hour train ride to get to/from school). There was a small cafeteria for this group, and for anyone else who wanted a snack. I think milk was 10 cents. I have no idea what a meal would have cost.
Currently school lunches in my district are “free”. The state/district started covering them in the Covid era and has continued funding them for all students. They also open the cafeteria in the mornings for students who want to grab breakfast. I actually feel a little guilty about it because we could afford to pay and if everyone who could pay, did pay, you’d think the funding would stretch further. But I’m also happy to know that everyone gets access to the same breakfast and lunch without needing to jump through any hoops.
75 cents a day in the early-to-mid 80s, eventually going up to a dollar. They were pretty terrible, so I almost always brought my own.
In elementary, 40 cents for hot lunch. You could buy a strip of five tickets for $2, which made you look like a rich kid. Milk was about a nickel, and we had our choice of chocolate or plain. I bit more in high school, the only price I remember was that hot dogs were 35 cents.
Catholic elementary school here. We went home for lunch; if I remember there were some kids who brought their lunch and ate it in one of the classrooms. We did get milk which I think was just included in what our parents paid for our schooling, as no money was collected from us.
Oh, and every so often the school would serve hot dogs for lunch, which I believe was “voluntary” in that our parents would decide whether we got it, and paid something extra for it.
When I was in high school in the mid-1990s it was a dollar and change, I think maybe around $1.35. I don’t remember what it was in elementary and middle school, probably slightly less.
Mine were free as a lad (poor kid); I don’t recall at all what we paid for my kids as they went through school. They had an account, and we’re supposed to tell me whenever it ran low, and they often forgot to do so, but I’d throw $50 or so on each whenever they’d remind me.
My baby daughters begged and begged me to come “eat” lunch at school with them.
They wanted me to bring McDonalds. And I did, on special days.
I nearly always packed their lunches at home(picky eaters).
If I came to eat we got in the lunch tray line. The kids tray was free. The “teachers” tray cost about $4-$5.
I remember being shocked. The amount of food on the teacher tray was not worth $5. Even if it was good.
Apparently soup day was a big deal.
It was the rolls, not the soup everyone loved.
Thanksgiving lunch was always crowded with parent and grandparent guests. It was bad. And there was a upcharge to $6.50.
I don’t remember jr. high, but I do remember this: My mom bought lunch ‘tickets’ so she wouldn’t have to give me money every day. (I don’t remember if they were carnival tickets, vouchers in a booklet, or what.) Anyway, in 6th grade I was taking my own lunch to school more often. At the end of the year I think I had one ticket left. My mom was angry at the 35¢ that was thus lost.
Nope, I walked the block home for lunch every day too. I went to a Catholic grade school where almost all of the kids lived within 1/2 mile from school and walked there. Maybe 95% of them went home for lunch. The few who ate at school brought their lunch I think. I don’t even know if there was a lunch service available.
I went to elementary school from 1961 to 1970. Cafeteria lunches were 25 cents, and if you wanted an ice cream (actually ice milk) sandwich afterwards, it was another dime. I don’t think we paid for milk, which was distributed at “nutrition” time in the classrooms, about 10 a.m.
I do remember a bit about the cafeteria meals. There were roasted chicken drumsticks, which were kind of brown and lukewarm and greasy, and there were “chili beans”, which were runny and rather flavorless. I did like the bread and butter, which was a slice of white bread sandwiched with a slice of wheat bread, glued together with margarine. I think I also remember a scoop of cottage cheese with a teeny chip of maraschino cherry stuck on top.
In high school, the food offering was quite sad, with one exception. For some reason, the fried fish “filet” they served on Fridays tasted quite good, and the tartar sauce was especially tasty. I’ve tried for years to duplicate that school tartar sauce recipe, with no luck.