I made it through school with homemade baloney or peanut butter sandwiches. If that’s good enough for me, it’s good enough for the little gender benders.
My parochial school cafeteria options consisted of:
Monday through Thursday either hamburger or hot dog
Friday - tuna salad sandwich...
And milk of course. Plain or chocolate...
I’d take a lunch to school more than half the time, but sometimes would buy the school lunch for 25 cents (especially on wiener-wrap day — yum). Once in a while I’d skip lunch so I could spend the quarter on candy.
Nobody that I knew of got free school lunches, though there might have been a few. My parents would have been furious at the mere suggestion that they couldn’t provide for their kids.