Sounds a lot like the school cafeteria I had in grade school.  Lunch  cost use 10 cents a day too  but we had to pay a week in advance.  Students were expected to help in the cafeteria that was built in the basement of the building - next to the bathrooms. We also sat at long benches to eat and when finished we had to put our plates on a special table to be scraped clean of any uneaten food.  Some kids took great delight in just dumping their garbage on the table.  My nightmare lunch was on the second and fourth  Monday of the month when lunch was  a half-cup of boiled spinach  and  a hard-boiled egg - I hated it, but the alternative was to go hungry.   Any student who had broken the school rules was assigned to sit at the teacher's table and then do do garbage detail by scraping the uneaten food off the student's plates into big barrels that were hauled off to a local pig farm.  Looking back sure makes me appreciate what we have today.

My mom packed my lunch every day.  During the winter there was a thermos of tea, but on warmer days she would have me purchase milk which was four cents.  When I was in high school, I still brought my lunch every day, except Wednesday which was hot dogs w/sauerkraut, mashed potatoes w/gravy and kernel corn.  Lunch was 35 cents.  However, I loved those hot dogs and the combo of potatoes, gravy and corn, so Mom took the day off and let me have a school lunch.

Spinach was my kryptonite. Hated it and we also had cafeteria nazis as we liked to whisper when they were not able to see our lips moving. I remember being forced to finish my spinach before I was allowed dessert. I would go without dessert just to make my point. 

I think they figured out quickly through experience with upper classmen that forcing them to remain in the cafeteria until they finished the foods they despised was not necessarily a punishment when math class was scheduled after lunch!
At some point, state and federal subsidies for low income students would be taken away at the whim of our political system and my parents would revert to making us carry the standard bologna and cheese sandwich, an apple , banana or orange and two oatmeal cookies. I never let on that I hated there was no variety in our sack lunches because we were poor as dirt and it would make my mother cry and my dad to spank me for being a selfish brat making my mother cry. During these austere times, all us poor  farm kids would exercise free market bartering by trading our various lunch items from our homes. Kept the peace at home and provided variety while driving us poor kids closer together.

Fun blog. Brings back memories I never thought I would call fond, but somehow now, I smile when I remember the hard times!