At that point, something changed and we all ate together in a repurposed room in the basement, eating the same unhealthy and unappetizing meals that were heated from frozen tinfoil platters in a towering steamer that a few harried lunch ladies managed.
One particularly gross option was the "pizza burger," literally a rectangular cheese pizza with a tired looking hamburger patty on top. There were no fresh vegetables. Everything hot came out of a can or freezer. We did get apples, but they were mealy Red Delicious or Macs that most kids threw away.
Around the same time, we began to get free milk in the mornings. I know this because we would hang out at the loading dock in the morning and beg the delivery driver for small boxes of chocolate milk. There might have been some sort of breakfast item too, like a pastry or small box of cereal.
If I were to hazard a guess at what was happening, someone correctly determined that many kids weren't eating healthy food or had unequal access to food. Subsidies were granted for providing free healthy meals, and children were forbidden from bringing meals from home.
The problem was the school and the staff didn't know how to provide such meals, and the city had a mix of schools ranging between 10 and 70 years old, mostly with limited kitchen and cafeteria facilities. I believe they took the easiest way out - put it out for bid, and chose the cheapest and easiest option to implement: little red cartons of milk in the morning, frozen and canned food for lunch or maybe a sandwich, and a checkmark on a government compliance form.
My kids attended the same school system starting in the 2000s. They had gotten rid of elementary school lunches for everyone. My spouse who comes from another country insisted on better quality lunches, which we would heat up and place in a thermos or bento box-type thing. Families who needed help with lunch were still provided with them I believe through SNAP or a similar program.