The thing that I really like about the approach taken by OP is that it AFAIK is broadcast-only, up to a certain radius. The hard part in mesh networking is routing, and broadcast sidesteps that

If you wouldn’t mind sharing, what school district was this?

I’m curious to research and learn more! What accounts for the budget overrun? Are there stats on how many free meals were taken per student (especially if this was broken down on a per-day basis, this could back up the “pizza” explanation)?