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.
The school bus took us home for lunch in 1-7 grades. I fixed lunch for my brother and me. Then we caught the bus back to school.