The $13,000 expense of renting the Mullins Center for the Amherst Regional High School graduation has been a target of budget-cutters in past years, but Principal Mark Jackson said last week that there are no better alternatives.

The ceremony can't be held outside because of the threat of rain, he told the School Committee. The Mullins Center has plenty of seats and parking spaces, and a parent committee found that other local venues would be more expensive, he said.

"I'd like this to go away once and for all," Jackson said.

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OFF TO NORWAY: Eighteen ARHS sophomores and two teachers will leave for Norway on Saturday and spend three weeks going to high school there and studying climate change.

They will spend the first two weeks at schools in Lorenskog, near Oslo, and Jessheim, in a rural area, with the students staying in the homes of Norwegian teenagers. In the third week they will stay in a hotel, attend a workshop at an environmental organization and develop plans to address climate change that they can implement when they return to Amherst.

All expenses are being covered by the Institute for Training & Development in Amherst.

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ON THE AIR: ARHS senior Carson Marshall will be performing on the violin on "From the Top," National Public Radio's show featuring young musicians. The show will be taped in Boston this Saturday and will air on WFCR Feb. 26 at 3 p.m.

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MORE TEACHERS: Michael Hayes, principal of the Regional Middle School, is requesting $120,000 for two extra teachers next year so that there can be three "teams" in both the seventh and eighth grades.

Without the addition, the seventh grade would have 2.5 teams with an average class size of 23.4 students, Hayes said. With three teams the average would be 20.7 students per class. Teachers on a half team have to be experts in multiple subjects, and students in a half team have felt socially isolated, he said.

But all additions to the budget require that state aid increase by 2 percent, as projected. Superintendent Maria Geryk called this a "best-case scenario" last week, and said that if state aid is level-funded, the regional budget proposal for next year would have to be reduced by $180,000 to $250,000.

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AND: On Monday, the Amherst School Committee will meet with the Select Board to choose a person to serve on the committee until the April 3 election...The third and final public forum on later starting times for the secondary schools will be Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Regional Middle School...The Regional School Committee will meet Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the ARHS library (not at Town Hall), and representatives of the four towns in the district will meet on budget issues Feb. 11 at the Regional Middle School.