AP European History is something of a forgotten AP class on campus as it’s not offered every year and its status for 2018-19 is unknown as the initial stages in students choosing next year’s classes begins Jan. 25 at the course fair.

“It is a non-required AP social studies course,” social studies department head Jeff Crowe said. “Every year we take a look and see how many kids put that on their course selection cards and if enough do, then the course will make. If we have less than 15 though that sign up, the course probably won’t make, or those students that are interested in taking it, might have to bus over and take it at the CTE Center.”

With the number of students taking AP Euro in the past limited, Frisco ISD has done what it can to find creative solutions to meet the requests of students who want to take the course.

“It used to be a situation, a couple of years ago, where we partnered with Centennial High School and if they had a year where there weren’t very many, like two years ago at Centennial, half of my class two years ago was Centennial High School kids and half was Liberty kids,” Crowe said. “Last year more kids at Centennial signed up than Liberty kids and so our kids went over to Centennial. This year, there weren’t enough kids to make either. I’m hearing rumors that there are a bunch of interested kids in taking European history.”

One of those interested students is junior Ruth Wang.

“I want to take AP Euro because I find European history interesting,” Wang said. “I’m really not looking for anything, I just want to learn about European history.”

As an elective, the course is designed for students that want to take an in-depth look at the last 500 years of European history.

“It’s really targeted for kids that are super interested in history,” Crowe said. “That are not necessarily having to take it because it’s a required course for their graduation requirement. It is an elective. It’s a heavy workload elective. There’s a lot of reading. They write essays, but it’s also a different kind of AP elective in that it’s mostly upperclassmen so we can talk about some more mature things than we could talk about in their sophomore AP world class. It’s generally kids that want to be there and that their parents are not forcing them to be there. The tone or the attitude of the class is more relaxed and more of a relaxed discussion based class with interested students.”

In March and April, department chairs and the principals will get together with the counselors and start making the master schedule for 2018-19.

“Next year, if it does make, there may be a new teacher teaching it,” Crowe said. “We have, besides myself, I’m the only one that has ever taught it at Liberty, but we have a teacher in our department now that has lived in Europe, that’s very interested in European history so we might let her teach it. We just have to wait and see what the master schedule looks like. All of those are parts to the puzzle and we’ll make the best decision based on student interest and what we can offer here at Liberty.”

Although it’s not a class this year, senior Luke Newcombe was able to take the class his sophomore year.

“I’m not sure if they’ve changed the curriculum since I took it because I took it two years ago,” Newcombe said. “For those wondering what it’s like, I’d say it’s kind of like a mix between AP World History and U.S. History. Just more focused and obviously since it’s only about Europe then it’s more specific than those other classes would be. If you’re looking for another AP class that you want to take and you have an interest in history, I’d definitely recommend it.”