If you hold a Texas security officer commission, your renewal is not a form you sign and mail. There is training attached to it, the training has to come from the right kind of school, and there is a window the training has to fall inside. Officers search for “armed security renewal classes near me” a few weeks before their expiration date and find out that the hours they took last year may not count, or that the class their company ran in-house does not apply to them. This post lays out what the rule actually says so you can plan the renewal instead of scrambling through it.

Six hours of continuing education

Under 37 Texas Administrative Code §35.161(g), commissioned security officers and personal protection officers owe 6 hours of continuing education. The rule also tells you how those hours are earned. They are satisfied “by completing the renewal portions of the Level III or IV training course, as applicable.” That last phrase does the work. If you hold a commission as an armed security officer, the renewal portion of the Level 3 course is your continuing education. If you are a personal protection officer, the renewal portion of the Level 4 course is yours. It is one course of training, not a stack of unrelated seminars you assemble on your own.

The same subsection restricts who may deliver it. The renewal training may be taught only by department-approved schools using department-approved instructors. A commissioned officer also submits a firearms proficiency certificate with the renewal application. So the renewal has two halves that both have to land: the classroom hours from an approved school, and current proof that you can still shoot the course.

When the hours have to be earned

This is the part officers most often get backwards. §35.161(n) sets a validity window for continuing education. The hours count only if they were completed within the two-year period preceding the current expiration date of your licence. That is a rule about when training is good, not a rule that says you must renew every two years. Read it as a shelf life on the class. Training you sat through three years ago is outside the window and does nothing for the renewal in front of you, no matter how good the class was.

The practical takeaway is to look at your expiration date first, then count backward. Any renewal training inside that two-year stretch is live. Anything earlier is not. If you are not sure which of your certificates still sits inside the window, pull them out and compare dates before you pay for anything. Our FAQs page covers the questions officers ask us most often about timing.

Two workarounds that do not work

Texas rules do allow some licensees to handle continuing education internally, and they do allow some credits from outside entities. Neither of those helps a commissioned officer, and this is where people get hurt.

• §35.162(d): the in-house continuing education exemption available to companies with ten or more licensed employees does not apply to commissioned security officers or personal protection officers.
• §35.162(f): continuing education credits from outside entities may not be used for commissioned security officers or personal protection officers either.

Put those two together and the picture is simple. There is no internal-training route and no outside-credit route for a commission. The hours come from an approved school with an approved instructor, or they do not exist. If a supervisor tells you the company will “take care of” your renewal hours in a Monday briefing, that is not a renewal. Officers have shown up at expiration with paperwork that could not be used and lost work time over it.

If you are serving or have served

§35.182 gives military service members two additional years to complete continuing education or any other renewal requirement. If a deployment or a duty assignment is what pushed you past your date, say so when you handle your renewal rather than assuming you are out of compliance. The additional time is in the rule.

Finding a class near you

“Near me” is a fair way to search, but the thing that matters is not distance, it is approval. A school twenty minutes from your house that is not department-approved cannot give you usable hours. A school farther away that is approved can. East Texas Security Training Academy is an approved school, and we run the armed security renewal course so the classroom portion is not gated behind a drive to a specific classroom on a specific weekday.

Officers renewing for the first time sometimes want to review the underlying commission material as well, which lives in our Level 3 commissioned security officer class. Personal protection officers should look at the Level 4 PPO class instead, since §35.161(g) points PPOs to the renewal portion of that course. You can see everything we offer on our class list, and if your situation is unusual, contact us and describe it before you register.

Renew early enough that a range date or a scheduling problem does not eat your margin. The rule gives you a two-year window to work inside. Use some of it.