How did you get to school?

Did you bring your lunch?

1. Yellow school bus bc we lived 5 miles outside of town limits.
2. Mostly yes because it was cheaper than giving the 4 of us $1.25 each for hot lunch every day, which we couldn't afford.

Bus. No.

I was on free school dinners most of my time in the "socialist nightmare" that was Thatcher's Britain. By the time I'd started paying for school dinners I'd become a f/t smoker and the 60 odd pence I got to pay for my dinner was enough for a pack of 10 Berkeley Superkings. Always walked to school because it was only a mile off, but had to take longer routes sometimes to avoid some of the nutcases in hostile territories!

45 minute yellow bus ride.

think i got dropped off in the mornings, to go home i took septa.

sometimes i brought lunch, sometimes i bought. i remember regular priced lunch cost $1.50, i was on the reduced price lunch for $0.40 i think.

Bus 8, yellow district school bus driven by woman actually named Mrs. Buss.

I usually lived within walking distance, except for grades 5-6, when I attended an alternative, very hippy-ish school (this was the mid-70s). It was the only one of its kind in the county, with one bus. My brother and I had a two mile walk to the bus stop, and then probably a 30 minute ride to school.

One of the highlights of every school year was picking out a new lunch box.

xp to myself - i remember that i used septa school tokens, which cost less than the regular septa tokens, but they would only allow you to buy them once a week. some kids got them for free based on family income.

https://i.ibb.co/X8Cvr4t/download.jpg

I walked to school most of my childhood except for a couple of years in high school where I was bused to a Catholic boys' school several towns away. I remember getting in a lot of trouble when a group of friends and I wrestled one kid we didn't like down and threw his shoes out the bus window.

I used to bring lunch from home, but toward the end of high school when I was working (Baskin-Robbins, Dunkin' Donuts, Quick Chek) I would leave school grounds at lunchtime — it was the late '80s, this was permitted; my school also had a student smoking section outside — to get pizza.

Walked or cycled, brought sandwiches nearly every day.

walked to primary school which was about a mile away
bus to secondary school which was 5 miles away except the year when I had double physics Friday mornings and I used to miss the bus and walk in and miss most of it.
secondary school let out at 2:15 so didn't bother with lunch.

My high school had a student smoking courtyard!!! Amazing.

Rode the bus throughout, pretty much. My parents liked remote rural houses, so we were never walking distance from anything but woods. I had a driver’s license my senior year but no car, so I was still on the bus. I got my first Walkman tape player sometime in middle school, so from then I mostly zoned out and listened to music on the bus. (None of my best friends were on my route.)

And yes, took my lunch pretty much every day. PBJ sandwiches, mostly.

walked to elementary and junior high (both less than a half-mile from my house), for high school sometimes rode the bus and sometimes drove. Though per Google Maps it's only 1.2 mi from my childhood home so I certainly *could* have walked, but, you know, suburban childhood, it just wasn't what was done.

I *think* I bought school lunch in high school but strangely I have no memory about this at all.

Rode with my mom on her way to work from 1st gr through high school (she worked at the high school). Getting home was usually the problem so usually I would go home with a friend (sometimes on the bus but it depended on the friend) and then my mom would pick me up at friend's house around 5. In gradeschool I stayed at afterschool care and listened to music and actually I don't remember much about it.

I brought my lunch until high school when I either ate fries every day for lunch or just didn't eat at all and then went to Taco Bell or similar after school.

I always imagined that people who could walk or take the bus directly from home (and back) were the lucky ones. I was always waiting waiting waiting for someone to pick me up.

took the bus to elementary and middle school, brought my lunch most days
high school i got a ride in the morning and walked home (1.5 miles), ate the cafeteria food every day

I never rode a school bus while growing up (but later in life I drove one). My K-8 elementary school was near enough to walk to easily, less than a quarter mile. My 9-12 secondary (high) school was somewhat more than a mile. Some days I would catch a ride with my dad in the morning and walk home in the afternoon. Other days I would ride my bike both ways. I never brought a lunch. Up through grade 2 I'd walk home for lunch. After that I ate whatever was served in the school cafeteria.

'68-69, dropped off by my mother on her way to work
'70-75, walked, 3 blocks
'75-78, rode the bus, long rural route, 40 minutes each way
'79-81, drove my very own 1978 Pinto

Ate school lunch probably 98% of my school days.

Square pizza, tater tots

elementary school - almost always walked, less than a mile from both houses we lived in.
junior high - bus sometimes, bike sometimes.
high school - bus, 'ok computer' on the discman.

junior high and high school lunch i think was a card that my parents paid for every year. a certain amount a day. i could either spend it on whatever the cafeteria was serving or get, like, crumb donettes and a dr pepper. in high school i remember getting a lot of chick-fil-a sandwiches, they had a grab-n-go.

Primary school - sometimes bus, sometimes dropped off by mum. Wssnt far, but a smidge too far to walk.

High school - climbed the back fence. We lived in a street of houses that backed onto our highschool. I used to go home for lunch every day and lived on a diet of cheese and tomato toasties/jaffles, ramen noodles, and Days of our Lives.

Elementary - walked for 2 years, yellow bus for 4 years
Junior high - bus for 1 year, walked for 1 year
High school - walked/bike for 1 year, bus for 3 years. I bought a car 2 weeks before graduation but wasn't allowed to drive it to school.

School lunches the whole time, though in high school I had to pay for my own and survived on cottage cheese and Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls.

Elementary - walked unless it was bad weather
Junior high - walked even if it was bad weather
High school - caught a ride with an older neighbor who had her license until I got mine

I don't remember packing a lunch unless it was a field trip. My high school expanded the year I started and the cafeteria couldn't handle twice as many students so they set up carts around the grounds where you could get pizza, Chik-Fil-A or Subway. Sophomores on up were allowed to leave campus so that year we mostly walked where we could, junior and senior year we'd bomb down the streets at 65 to get to fast food places that didn't have lines of other students.

I could get four people inside my F-150 and 10 more in the bed for lunch runs. Miracle we all survived.

I was always in awe of the american school of TV and movies where you always had a big dining hall and hot food you could buy. I dont know anyone here who had that (maybe private/boarding schools do?), you either brought yr lunch in, bought a meat pie or sausage roll from the canteen, or snuck off and got KFC or chips or something. Or ate at home like I was lucky to do heh.

this would be about average for our cafeteria food but the tater tots and chicken nuggets would have less color and there was no fresh fruit

https://www.southernliving.com/thmb/7nXwDG77BEDSYw0zUbxmK6m-zpU=/1500x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/GettyImages-96776928-2000-32160ee48e3146f693ee3ee8d8b6dca5.jpg

Trying to find a photo that captures the absolute shittiness of school pizza and this comes close

https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-03/27/17/enhanced/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-01/original-grid-image-23963-1490650318-7.jpg

primary (when I lived in the countryside): walked 45 mins across the countryside
primary (when I moved to a city): driven for 5 minutes
secondary: two public buses each way, took an hour
sixth form: 40 minute walk along roads and a park

So many answers to this. (Specifically this - getting home from school was sometimes different, but you didn’t ask that.)

Elementary school: my mother drove me there, mostly, though at some points I was carpooling with other kids in my class.

Middle school: my mother drove me some of the time, but for a big chunk of this time I was taking public transportation (buses), which was an eye opener and took a bunch of time.

High school: public buses, maybe with public subway mixed in. In the last semester of senior year of high school I bought a used car from my uncle and drove that.

Lunches!

Elementary: we didn’t really have a cafeteria so I was bringing my lunch, though the third grade class always made and sold pizzas on Wednesday, so that was usually “buy cheap pizza for lunch” day.

Middle: we had crappy cafeterias, so sometimes I brought lunch and sometimes I bought it.

High: we had a decent cafeteria! Every now and again I bought lunch but usually brought lunch from home. (Our cafeteria opened super early and I was usually there super early, and I’d buy/eat breakfast at school a lot.)

I really envied people who could just walk to school, but I never lived near enough to any of my schools for this to be a realistic option.

walked uphill both ways in all weathers, we were glad for the wash when it rained, bloody kids these days don’t know how good they’ve got it with their hoverboards and ready access to penicillin