A “green tray” from the cafeteria was 45 cents in 1970-ish.
mmm
I don’t remember much. The one thing I always remember were the hot dogs. They always seemed to have a greenish sheen to them; but they tasted OK. ISTR they tasted better than Farm John (California/L.A. brand) hot dogs. I never did like those. I haven’t had a Farmer John hot dog since I was a kid, so I don’t know how they are now. (It would be nice if I could have a taste test between the unavailable-here Farmer John hot dogs, and the specifically-undesired Bar-S ones.)
I also remember spaghetti, squares of bad pizza, turkey and gravy, and… that’s all I can specifically remember. The food was served on cafeteria trays with the main dish in the large compartment, and salad, fruit, dessert, and milk in the other compartments. I had one friend who liked to mix everything together and pour milk on it, and eat it that way.
I always brown-bagged lunch throughout elementary and middle school so never bought the (mostly subsidized) lunch options and don’t really know the prices, but in my HS (North Jersey, around 1981) they offered a breakfast of a bowl of sugary cereal (froot loops, etc.), a pastry (drake’s cake, etc.) milk and juice, for $0.35.
Elementary school in the late 40s, if you didn’t go home for lunch, you had to brown bag it. HS, 1950-54, my recollection is that it started at 17c and gradually rose to 23c for the standard lunch. You could buy extreas.
My district sold elementary students two Jack-in-the Box styled beefy-sauced tacos for 85 cents in 1982. I remember my classmate exclaimed “yeah- tacos” with the most joyous sound.
I personally never bought lunch but packed my own lunch each day instead. Hot dogs with cheddar and mustard in flour tortillas have always been my favorite lunch ever since.
Late 70s-early 80s about $.55.
But a couple friends and I figured if you were the last people in line, the cafeteria people felt bad for you (or wanted to get rid of food) and you could get an extra helping of something. When there was chocolate sheet cake, we would take our time and be one of the very last kids to eat, and sometimes get an extra piece of cake!
Lucky duck.
In grade school, mine was I think 45 cents. And worth every penny 
By high school, I didn’t do lunch. My schedule just worked out that way, I usually got off around 2pm. If I got hungry, I just skipped out, nobody carred.
Grade school late sixties, middle school early 70s.
Lunch in grade school was a quarter, eventually getting near a half-dollar by 6th grade.
It was 75 cents in middle school, but I never ate lunch those years. Court-ordered busing sent me to the ghetto, and the kids there stole my money so often that I gave up. Didn’t want to tell my folks, so I hid the money each morning before school and saved it for buying models and stuff on the weekends.
Can’t remember high school lunch cost. The cafeteria was overcrowded and I brought mine each day rather than spend the entire break standing in line.
Interesting to find others that had absolutely no interest in “hot lunch”, I had it exactly twice in my school career, in kindergarten when they made me do it when they were teaching the class how the lunch line worked. Since I never wanted it I don’t remember how much it cost, although I remember in elementery school kids kept their prepaid “lunch tickets” in a metal band-aid box in their desks,
In 1970, my cafeteria lunches cost 35 cents. However, unlike in junior high, the high school cafeteria would allow you to purchase items separately. For example, I could get two hamburgers for 20 cents each and a (big) side for 10 cents. The additional 15 cents meant more protein and carbs for a varsity lineman (no brag…just fact).
Other students and team members were astonished I could get a different meal than they did. Everyone just assumed that they would pay their 35 cents and go down the line getting the same stuff glopped on their trays as everyone else.
It was a different time.
Public Elementary school in S Fla, no idea the cost or how we paid for it but I do remember the Sicilian style pizza squares were huge and delicious and the white milk ( no chocolate) was ice cold which complimented the shortbread cookies but I picked out the walnut bits. Middle school meals were less memorable but chocolate milk! I do recall how we bussed our own trays placing cutlery in bins and tossing the remains of our meal into the maw of a churning chunky watery wave that was the garbage disposal.
HS my mom gave lunch money maybe a buck seventy-five, but I never stepped a foot inside the cafeteria. Usually grab a pizza slice from the canteen near the portables or We’d walk off campus to the plaza across the street. Buy icees, chips and candy then go cruise the record store where we’d have to wait in line to be allowed inside.
Now I know the schools here used to charge $2.45 subsidized by usda iirc. But big Gretch balanced our state budget and was also able to provide all k-12 schools free meals. and they have numerous choices everyday but lot more plastic waste of single use cutlery straws and trays.
The place I grew up we didn’t really have a lunch.
School hours were something like 7:45-1:45 (varied over the different schools) and there was a 20 minute recess around 11 during which you ate the snack you brought from home or bought something from the tuck shop. Something like a bag of chips would be the equivalent of USD $0.10 or $0.15 back in 1979-1981 ish.
To put this in perspective a working class wage was the equivalent of USD $3 a DAY.
Most of us rode busses to school; on not very direct routes because of needing to pick everybody up, and with time for a lot of stops enroute. By the time we’d have gotten there and back again, there would have been no time for lunch, and just getting there and back would have taken longer than they gave us for lunch.
I don’t remember what lunch cost, except that it must have been well under a dollar, because it was the 1950’s. I do remember that we had to eat everything; so I almost always brought my own lunch, because the school lunches almost always had at least one ingredient I couldn’t stand to eat (I couldn’t at the time eat any tomato sauces, or most pastas, or some other things; they made me literally nauseated.) I sometimes found this frustrating because they often did have something on the school’s menu that I really liked, but would also have something else on the menu that I couldn’t get down, and if you took the school lunch, again, you had to eat all of it. I liked my lunches brought from home, though; I don’t remember everything I had in them – it varied – but I do remember peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches. I expect I also had some fruit, and/or maybe a cookie. All the pre-packaged by the store lunch items I don’t think existed yet.
I don’t think schools try to make the kids eat everything any longer. And AIUI now they often get a choice of items. This is an improvement.
I started 1st grade in 1954 and it’s likely your school lunches were under 50 cents.
How did they enforce this?
That, I don’t remember. I suppose the same way they enforced us lining up, two lines boys and girls, arranged by height, to walk to the lunchroom or outside for recess; or the same way they enforced us sitting down when the teacher said to sit down, or reading aloud when it was your turn to read aloud, or whatever else they told us to do. In that place and time, as I remember it, children did what the grownups told them, at least when the grownups were looking. (When they weren’t looking might be another matter altogether.)
I vaguely remember (not specifically about food) people being sat in the corner, or sent to the principal. I don’t remember, myself, being anything more than scolded for anything.
Just wondering. I do remember that back then the teacher’s word was law. And a parent would back up the teacher and not protect you. That situation is completely reversed now.
Oh, wow. I’d forgotten about the “Have to eat everything” aspect – well, you didn’t have to actually eat it, but you weren’t allowed to leave the lunch room until your plate was empty. Otherwise you had to sit there the entire time, til the end of lunch break AND the recess that came after it. (This was 1st and part of 2nd grade, up until we moved away a few months in.)
I wasn’t a picky eater mostly, I could force down most everything, but NOT creamed spinach. I eventually got really good as sneakily stuffing that slimy crap into the blessedly opaque paperboard milk carton. 
I wonder – did no children back then have food allergies at all?
I remember lunch being 1.10 in 5th/6th grade. At my elementary school, when we were in 5th and 6th grade, we could volunteer to help serve lunch. Didn’t have a food handler’s license, so probably not permitted anymore. Anyway, there was one student who collected the money and two students on the food line, along with 2-3 adults (it’s been a few years).
I looked at my elementary school yearbook and there are pictures of the library helpers (did that too), the office helpers and the crossing guards. But none for the food helpers. I’m fairly certain I didn’t dream it.
In 7th and 8th grade we had a ice cream counter at lunch, and ice creams were 40 cents, aka one quarter, one dime and one nickel.
I don’t know whether there were massively fewer allergies, or whether the seriously allergic kids all died before they got to school age; but I do know that I didn’t start hearing about food allergies until much later than the 1950’s. I suspect that there actually were a lot fewer people with serious food allergies; but there must have been some.
I had a friend c1970 with type 1 diabetes who had someone pick her up and take her home for lunch everyday. They didn’t want her anywhere near the cafeteria.