Did and does everyone have pizza on Friday at their schools k-12?

Yes. My kids have pizza available on Fridays. I also had it growing up, although I prefer to call it “pizza” – it was really just something that roughly looked like pizza, but was really just a way to get really bad heartburn.

In my schools in Florida, it was pizza every day. Most of the time, that was the only thing you could get people to eat.

In New York, Friday was Stuffed Shells day. That was awesome.

Yeah, I seem to remember Friday being pizza day. (Sometimes “Mexican pizza” though… shudders)

Not at my daughter’s school here in western Illinois. There is only one day this month that her school is serving whole grain pizza, and that’s on a Tuesday. Some of the food being served at her school on Fridays for the month of March include: chicken fajita on whole grain soft shell, hot ham and cheese on whole grain bread and taco on whole grain shell with fresh lettuce and cheese.

I think I do remember pizza being served on Fridays when I was growing up in Nevada, but I usually took my own lunch to school.

My school served something that had a passing resemblance to pizza. it is hexagonal in shape and it really didn’t taste like pizza.

I’ve never heard of this.

We didn’t have specific days when one things was served. And our pizza resembled shoe leather more than it did pizza when it was offered.

I always brought a bagged lunch, except on days that the school had a salad bar open, but I do seem to recall pizza being served on Fridays. My kids have pizza served on Fridays, as well.
Interesting question, never really thought about it before.

When we came to the US in 1971 until I graduated from high school in 1979 we had pizza-like substance on Fridays. When I was in high school, we were allowed to leave campus for lunch so I broke the cycle of pizza then. Actually only my senior year.

I just looked up our local school district lunch menu online. Elementary kiddos never get pizza on Fridays. It is one of the options every other Wednesday. Secondary school (middle-high school) offers pizza as an option every friday, along with two other choices. Pizza has meat every other week and only cheese every week (so every other week you could choose between meat and cheese, alternating with weeks of only a cheese option).

But like I said, no one is ever forced to eat pizza… it is only one of the options offered.

If it’s of interest to you… this year our school district offers free food (breakfast and lunch) to all children because our city has such a high percentage of children below the poverty level. I think they got approved for a grant to offer free food to all. According to my teenager, the food is so disgusting and in such small quantity that he would rather go without than eat the free lunch. He blames Michelle Obama for the change in quantity.

My kids have been offered pizza every Friday from 1st grade through high school. In middle school it was also offered on Mondays. In the high school it is one of the daily choices.

But when I was in school in the sixties, it was uncommon. My 1st/2nd grede was at a private school in San Francisco – we never had pizza. 3rd and 4th grade were at a parochial school in Harrison New York. We had tuna casserole every Friday (I love ahi and grilled albacore, but I hate tuna casserole). And at a public school in California, pizza was only an occasional lunch, maybe once a month on Wednesdays. The cafeteria manager didn’t like it because it was so popular there was always a longer line and more work.

@JLeslie I don’t think it has anything to do with Catholics abstaining from meat. That became a voluntary observance outside of Lent back in 1966.

@Cupcake My daughter’s school implemented a healthier lunch and breakfast menu this year. Even the cookies are made with whole grain. She told me that most of the kids hate the new lunch menu and a lot of it is thrown away. She used to eat hot lunch at least 3 times a week, but with the new menu she hasn’t had a hot lunch yet. She’s taken her lunch every day so far. It’s funny you mention Michelle. Her school had an election in October and most of her classmates said they were voting for Romney because Michelle ruined their school lunch.

@jonsblond Ha! I don’t know if his school district is using more whole grain, it just sounded like they reduced portion sizes. I can understand why a 16 year old athlete would complain about that. I have seen reports on the news about more lunches being thrown away this year.

I seem to remember that back in the dark ages of elementary school, we actually had fish on Fridays for the Catholics. (Assume it was fish sticks or something.)

I think my kids had pizza one day a week but not sure if it was Wednesday or Friday.

I grew up with Friday Pizza Day, and my kids’ school does it, too.

No, I think Friday was taco bar for us and Wednesday was pizza. Not sure.

Friday was most certainly pizza day in my elementary school.

Maybe it depends if you live in a very Catholic area? Possibly we had fish sticks as an option that day as @janbb pointed out. That sounds familiar, but I would always choose pizza over fishsticks when I was a kid.

I grew up in the northeast and most of my friends are from Michigan, some FL, over 90% of them are Catholic. Here in TN maybe 25% of the people I socialize with are Catholic, and that is surprisingly high I would think for the area..

@zenvelo Families still do fish Friday throughout the year. Many families do pizza Friday, even nonCatholics. Kind of a Friday family night where mommy doesn’t have to cook. Most of my friends grew up eating fish or pasta on Fridays, I don’t know if they do it now (we are all in our 40’s). I remember one of my friends saying how ridiculous it was to think it represented some sort of sacrifice since they would have some beautiful fish dinner or yummy pasta or pizza. But, I guess it made them pause for a minute and remember why they don’t eat meat that night.

I still am not sure that is why schools do it though. It’s just a guess. I think if you are going to serve pizza, pasta or fish sticks, why not make it Friday to accomodate the Catholic kids if you live in a place that has a lot of Catholics.

Did? No. I saw pizza for the first time at a party when I was a senior in high school in Massachusetts.

When I was in school they made their own pizzas about once a month, and it was actually one of the better meals. It wasn’t necessarily on Friday. It was a small school, so there was only the one option in the cafeteria. If you didn’t like what the school served you brown bagged it.

Not when I was a kid. We didn’t even have a cafeteria in my school – I think they may have had them in some of the large city schools. It was lunch, from home, in a brown paper bag or a plastic lunch box. However, I am in Canada. I believe it is different these days though.

@JLeslie I think I didn’t communicate the point I was making. What I am saying is that it seems like Pizza Friday is relatively new, as in Post 1980, and the relaxation of abstinence many years earlier would mean there is not causality between Catholic observance and school menu switching to pizza.

Although a lot of non-catholics considered it an obligation to eat fish, it was abstention from meat was the rule.

I grew up with pizza Fridays. Just checked the school menu for my kids’ district, and it looks like pizza is a choice on both Mondays and Fridays. They have a lot more choices these days. I seem to remember in both elementary and middle schools, we got what they gave you, period. I think the only choice we had was white or chocolate milk.

Our school has pizza only one day this moth.
@Jeruba I’ve been a pizza fanatic since I was a kid. It was how I started cooking. I was about 6 or 7 and always bugged my mom to make pizza. She got fed up and said here you make it. I’ve been cooking ever since.

@zenvelo except I was born in 68, graduated high school in 1985.

@Jeruba That is suprising to me coming from Mass. I think of Mass as having plenty of Italians, but probably it depends what part of the state. I have never had peanut butter and Jelly and I remember the first time I had a grilled cheese sandwich I was about 10 or 11, which was late I think.

@Plucky The first elementary school I attended didn’t have a cafeteria either. I moved to another state when I was starting the 5th grade and that school had one. My mom was so happy. LOL.

@JLeslie, I think it’s more about when than where. It was quite a long time ago now. We lived just south of Boston, and there were plenty of Italians (and Irish) in my neighborhood and school.

When I was in elementary school, though, kids went home for lunch. Junior and senior high school cafeterias served hot meals such as meat loaf, macaroni and cheese, and chipped beef on toast. Nothing you could call fast-food-type meals would have been countenanced. A main dish cost 26 cents, a pint of milk was 4 cents, and if I could come up with another nickel I could have a Hoodsie—an ice cream cup, half chocolate and half vanilla.

Pizza existed, but it was not commonplace at the time. Pizza shops and other fast-food joints on every other corner are a relatively recent phenomenon in the U.S., meaning only in the past few generations. I remember the novelty of visiting the first Burger King in the city where I grew up. People used to go out to diners for an inexpensive meal. Some of them were (and some few survivors still are) in converted railroad cars, and some were just little restaurants with menus of simple fare but no junk food.

@Jeruba I actually was thinking after I posted my answer that probably a generation or two before me pizza places and pizza in general was less common. When I was little, I am 45, there were a lot of pizzerias in NYC and surrounding areas, but I think NY is its own bubble. Pizza is a fast food in NYC and surrounding suburbs, but still is not in many parts of the country even today.

I don’t remember the first time I went to McDonald’s (my mom would never take us to Burger King, they had a Pepsi contract back then and she is a cocaholic) but I do remember when McDonald’s was kind of newish for me. Growing up in NY I had never been in one, except when we took a road trip. I moved when I was 9 to Maryland and there was a McDonald’s a couple miles away, so we went once in a blue moon. I went more regularly when I was in high school with friends.

I think my lunch meal was 65¢ in 5th grade. Maybe it was 85¢? it was a main dish, a side or two and milk. @augustlan might know for sure. I think she went to elementary in my school system, but maybe not.

When I was younger (elementary school), we had pizza for lunch on Fridays. In middle school and high school, there was a separate pizza line and pizza was offered every day, in addition to the regular meal.

My son is now in middle school and has the same thing I had when I was in middle school, a separate line to get pizza or he can get the regular meal, or he can also get other options (burgers, sandwiches, salads, and more).

Pizza every day?! My niece and nephew had it 3 times a week and I couldn’t believe it. I was jealous really. Every day; even I think that is overkill.

The high school my sons went to was a large school and they had several options for lunch. It sounds similar to what @Seaofclouds described. The cafeteria was set up like a mall food court with different types of stations for food. I can’t remember all of their options, but one was a pizza station. If someone wanted to eat pizza every day, they could. I was thinking it would get tiresome eating the same thing every day, but then I remembered I went to KFC every day when I was a senior and I ordered the same thing each day. I was a picky eater.

@Seaofclouds That reminds me that when I was in high school, there was a separate line for kids to buy premade taco bell tacos or premade pizza hut personal pizzas. They were available daily, although more expensive than the school lunches.

I had hot dog Wednesday for $.25 a hot dog, and Fridays in junior high we had McDonalds Fridays. In high school we had a real cafeteria and had pizza rounds for $0.75. each.