I fully expect this thread to cement my legacy on the SDMB. Or it’ll sink like a stone, one or the other.
Anyway, back in elementary school, we would purchase half pints of milk for snack time. I would get chocolate. The class order would always be 28 chocolate, 2 white, 1 skim. Milk was 8¢.
The next milk was never free if the lot code stamp was smudged, no matter how much Christine Cognetti insisted that it was.
I took my milk money in every Monday for the week; I seem to remember it was two coins, so either 15 cents or 35 cents (late 70s). We didn’t get a choice 
so I believe it was always a half-pint of whole milk. I remember red cartons.
It went down nice with the peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich I took in every day. For ten years.
We didn’t have a choice.
White milk for all.
Can’t remember how much I paid.
A half pint of whole milk. It was free I believe, courtesy of the Government.
We didn’t get milk. Bastid government doesn’t care about our growing bones.
I should add, there wasn’t a choice of milk. Hell, I didn’t have a choice of whether to drink it or not. It was a case of you sat there until it was all gone. I still hate milk on its own.
Where did kids get milk at school, and when did it start? The school I went to (1960s, Ontario) didn’t have a kitchen or a cafeteria. Just curious.
I was a skim drinker at school. The chocolate was always too warm and disgustingly sweet and the regular milk was warm and bordering on spoiled. The skim was always in the bottom covered in ice. It used to cost 35¢ when I was in elementary.
I started 1st grade in 1969. While I was in Elementary School, we had Milk Time (Band Name!) in the mid-afternoon. Chocolate or white milk were the choices. You had a Milk Ticket they punched. Milk was 10¢. Good times…
(Late 60s- 70s) We got the milk for lunch. It wasn’t free unless you were on the ‘School Lunch Program’. IIRC there was also a ‘Milk Program’ where if you got to school a few miniutes early, you got free milk in the mornings. It was for kids who didn’t get breakfast at home. I remember there would be a few little brown cartons mixed in with all the red ones, but they got snatched up pretty quick.
We didn’t get a choice between whole or skim; the choice was 1% (white) and chocolate.
I remember when I started elementary school in 1970, milk was 4¢ - I don’t know how much it was as the years went on.
We had our choice of whole, 1% and skim. Though, the vast majority of us drank whole milk, that also accounted for about 90% of the selection. Fridays our choices included chocolate milk, and Monday’s was always a competative rush to get one the few leftover cartons.
I think it was $0.35 on it’s own but the price was included in our lunch tickets. I usually had a pale yellow ticket (20 day) but just as many had a pink ticket (5 day) and we were always in awe of those few with the bright flashy GREEN tickets. Of course that was because they were poor and on the reduced lunch program, but that didn’t stop us from literally being green with envy! 
I always drink white milk to this day. Chocolate milk is suspicious. Ever seen a chocolate cow? :dubious: 
And it was in those little half-pint containers (or was it pint), what were red and white. And 25 cents, I think.
Who here did the milk-drinking race? Gotta drink the whole thing without taking a breath. Major brain freeze!
Ooh, ooh! I know the answer to this!
None other than Al Capone started the move that led to the Chicago public school system to see that the kids got subsidized fresh(-ish) milk. It was part of his “PR” campaign to offset his bad-guy image (Al liked to think of himself as beloved, popular, etc.), and also because he honestly cared about the kids (as many fathers, especially - I’m told - Sicilians - do).
It spread from Chicago nationwide.
Now I’d better go make sure that National Parks lecturer at Alcatraz wasn’t lyin’ to us…
My son can only buy milk at lunch although he could get it in the classroom in halfday kindergarten. He’s in first grade now. He brings a snack and beverage for morning recess.
It’s chocolate, “regular”, skim or - get this - coffee. Why, yes, we do live in Rhode Island.
It’s 50 cents at lunchtime.
We had our choice of whole, 1% and skim. Though, the vast majority of us drank whole milk, that also accounted for about 90% of the selection. Fridays our choices included chocolate milk, and Monday was always a competative rush to get one the few leftover cartons.
I usually went for the whole/chocolate milk, much to my mother’s chagrin*
I think it was $0.35 on it’s own but the price was included in our lunch tickets. I usually had a pale yellow ticket (20 day) but just as many had a pink ticket (5 day) and we were always in awe of those few with the bright flashy GREEN tickets. Of course that was because they were poor and on the reduced lunch program, but that didn’t stop us from literally being green with envy!
*She was ok with skim milk then, but today it’s soy or nothing. I told her once, “But milk, it does a body good!” She quickly shot back, “Yeah, but that’s what the milk companies want you think !”
We didn’t have any choice – whole milk only. It was three cents a day (this was back in the 50s) to start, which they raised to seven cents by the end of elementary school.
OK, I got it partially right. Capone actually pushed for expiration dating on milk cartons, to prevent kids from getting sick from spoiled milk.
But, the milk thing did start in Chicago in 1940 .
I went to elementarry school starting in the late 80’s (87 or 88.)
We only had whole milk (red and white container) and skim (light blue and white) until I was in sixth grade. In sixth grade, they allowed us to get chocolate milk on Fridays only. Milk was not free, you got it as part of paying for a school lunch. Every week, we’d have to bring in our lunch money for the lunch ladies. If you wanted to buy an extra milk, it was $0.25.
Starting in midle school and through high school they had whole, skim, 2%, and 1% chocolate. I got a chocolate milk for lunch every day i was in high school (that I got a school lunch) for my entire high school career, if for no other reason that I was mad I didn’t get an adequate amount in elementary school.
I heard (I think it was a Chicago historian being interviewed on the radio) that Capone had a son who got sick from drinking spoiled milk, which inspired his push for the dating of milk. The historian also said that once Capone was out of the way, that the dating was removed. (And was eventually put back, later).