The author reports on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's plan to look closely at whether the food-service-management companies running many school cafeterias are passing along all the discounts and rebates they receive from their suppliers to the districts that hire them. The plan to probe companies will begin in August, said Alison Decker, a lawyer in the USDA's office of inspector general. It was triggered in part by a settlement between the New York state attorney general and Sodexo, one of several large companies in the business of running school cafeterias. Last July, Sodexo, a French company with its U.S. headquarters in Gaithersburg, Maryland, agreed to pay $20 million to resolve allegations that it had over charged 21 school districts and the State University of New York system for some of the food provided to students. That settlement prompted U.S. Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, D-Conn., to write to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack last September, urging a broader audit. The Agriculture Department's office of inspector general has notified the USDA of its plans for an audit, but it hasn't said which companies and districts will be involved, Ms. Decker said. The biggest providers of school food-management services are Sodexo, Philadelphia-based Aramark, and Chartwells, based in Charlotte, North Carolina.