[6] Schergen, who gave himself the nickname "Mr. Spider" when he began teaching at Jenner in 1993, taught art at the school for 22 years, retiring in 2015.
[11] Edward Jenner School opened in 1944 with a majority student body made up of Italian migrants.
[citation needed] In January and April 1966,[12] African-American parents boycotted the school in order to remove the white principal, Mildred Chuchut of Jenner.
[17] Don Terry of The New York Times wrote that the school's atmosphere deteriorated after the October 13, 1992 shooting death of Jenner student Dantrell Davis, age 7.
From March to October of that year, three students, including Davis, were fatally shot within blocks of Jenner.
[19] That year the playground was in such a poor condition that children could not use it, and violent acts occurred in the vicinity of the school.
At the time of its new campus opening, Enrollment had declined due to the rapid demolition of the Cabrini-Green public housing complex where majority of its student population resided.
That year Steven Drummond of Education Week stated that while Jenner was still surrounded by poverty, violence "is not as prevalent as it once was".
[25] Mina Bloom of DNA Info wrote that Jenner had improved safety-wise since the appointment of principal Robert Croston, who received his degree from Harvard University.
[26] Concerns involving students crossing gang territorial lines meant that both schools remained open.
[27] In 2015, Robert Croston, the principal of Jenner, and the principal of Ogden International School, a K–12 institution with an elementary campus in the Gold Coast and a secondary campus in West Town, proposed merging their schools; Ogden was overcrowded while Jenner was under-enrollment and was threatened with closure.
[28][3] At first the merger proposal was canceled as there was not enough time left to get it accomplished for the 2015-2016 school year,[29] and aside from the opposition of some parents, the CPS had what David Matthews of DNA Info referred to as "lukewarm support".