I was in a rural school in Colorado in the 70s & my kids were in the school system in the 90s, so some of this might apply. In a tiny community, the junior and senior high might well be in the same building in order to share a gym, music room, art rooms, cafeteria, etc., even today (e.g. Rangely Jr.-Sr. High). But the kids would have their regular classes in different parts of the building so the senior high students wouldn't be mixing with the junior highers.
Also, cool stuff such as block schedules (which Sue S. mentioned) and calculus classes didn't occur in a tiny school in a poor community. In fact, journalism wasn't usually a class. It was a club, with kids who were committed to it meeting with a sponsor after school or in the evening to put out a school paper.
In the 70s, fighting didn't automatically draw a suspension, but by the 90s, it did. Even someone defending himself would automatically get a three-day suspension.
Lunch: no choices--just a specific meal that day, with the lunch menu posted in the local newspaper each week and given during the announcements during first period. After that, the teacher called for a show of hands of students who were taking hot lunch. In the cafeteria, you usually bought either a lunch ticket (punches for 5 days or 20 days, although there were single daily tickets as well), or a milk ticket, which is what the cold lunch kids got to have with their lunches. No soda machines or vending machines.
Also, FH, you asked about breaks. Normally the schedule is 6 or 7 periods with a half hour lunch break before, during, or after 4th period, depending on how many sections of lunch they had to run to give everyone a place to sit. The schedule used to be 6 periods per day with a 45 minute lunch period, so school ran from 8:30 to 3:30 pm, but when they decided to fit in an additional period, school ran from 7:30 to 3:00 pm, and lunch shrank to 1/2 hour. Periods are usually 50 or 55 minutes with a 5 minute passing period so students can go to their next class. The only break is for lunch.
In the 70s, the campus was always open, even though the only place you could get to during lunch was a convenience store. In the 90s, the campus was completely closed for everyone, and it has since changed to a mix, closed for freshmen & sophomores, and open for juniors & seniors.
