by KYW's Mike DeNardo
Philadelphia schools are staying open for Inauguration Day next Tuesday. The superintendent, though, will be in Washington.
Superintendent Arlene Ackerman says she feels a little guilty over the fact that she's keeping Philadelphia schools open on inauguration day -- yet she's going to Washington to see Barack Obama sworn in.
Ackerman will be in Washington on Monday - Martin Luther King Day - to tape a documentary with filmmaker Spike Lee. She says she got an inaugural invitation from a Pennsylvania legislator and then decided she couldn't say no:
"Yesterday I told my staff I wasn't going and then I talked to people who made it possible for me to go. And then I thought, 'What an ingrate!" if I say I'm not going."
And as for Philadelphia school students or staff who really want to go to the inaugural, she says she can't keep them from going.
More Inauguration 2009 coverage