A renewal is not one action. It is a short sequence, and in Garland the officers who get caught out are almost always the ones who tried to start at the end of it.

What Has To Be In Hand Before You Apply

1. Six hours of continuing education, already earned — not scheduled, earned.
2. Those hours delivered by a department-approved training school and instructor, in the renewal portion of the Level 3 or Level 4 course as applicable to your credential.
3. The hours completed inside the two-year window preceding your current expiration date.
4. A firearms proficiency certificate, if you hold a commissioned security officer license.

Each of those four comes from a specific provision of 37 TAC Chapter 35, and each one fails in its own way. Taken one at a time:

1. The hours have to exist before the application does

§35.161(a) is unusually blunt: a renewal application may not be submitted until the required minimum continuing education hours have been earned. There is no filing first and finishing later. The same subsection puts two other duties in place — proof of completion must be maintained by the employer in the employee’s personnel file, and the licensee indicates completion on the renewal application itself. If you have moved between contract companies, which happens constantly across the Garland and Mesquite industrial corridor, it is worth confirming which employer is actually holding that proof for you.

2. Only an approved school can supply them

§35.161(g) sets the six hours for commissioned security officers and personal protection officers, states that the requirement is satisfied by completing the renewal portions of the Level III or IV training course, as applicable, and requires that the continuing education be taught by department-approved training schools and instructors. Two further provisions shut the side doors. §35.162(d) says the in-house continuing education exemption that companies with ten or more licensed employees may use does not apply to commissioned security officers or personal protection officers. §35.162(f) says credits earned through outside entities may not be used for them either. For an armed officer there is no employer-run substitute and no generic online CE certificate that will stand in.

3. Timing is a window, not an interval

§35.161(n) provides that continuing education is only valid if completed within the two-year period preceding the license’s current expiration date. Read that as a window you have to land inside, not as a “renew every two years” habit. Hours banked too early simply do not count toward the current cycle, which is a harder lesson than it sounds when you have already paid for and sat through the class.

4. Commissioned officers file a firearms proficiency certificate

Under the same §35.161(g), a commissioned security officer must submit a firearms proficiency certificate with the renewal application. This is the reason our renewal course is sold the way it is: the price covers the online training only, and the in-person firearms qualification is not included — it is scheduled separately once you have finished the online portion. If you carry a shotgun on your post, note also that §35.146(b) sets a biennial familiarization of six rounds of “00” buckshot in connection with renewal of a commissioned security officer.

Then: Keep The Paper

You finish, you receive the certificate of completion the site lists as PSP 31, and the sequence still is not quite over. §35.161(m) puts the burden on the attendee: keep certificates of completion for two years and furnish copies to the department on request. §35.162(b)(3) describes what a compliant certificate looks like — your name and license number, the date of attendance, the number of hours, the courses attended, signed and dated by the school director — and the school retains its own records for two years alongside yours.

Where Garland Officers Fall Outside The Sequence

Garland sits in the working half of the DFW metroplex — manufacturing plants, freight and distribution operations, big-box retail corridors and the office parks that feed off them — and armed posts there tend to run on rotating shifts that make a fixed classroom day genuinely hard to attend. That is the practical case for doing the six hours 100% online. But two situations sit outside this checklist entirely. If you are working unarmed on a Level 2 non-commissioned license, §35.161(b) exempts noncommissioned security officers from continuing education and none of the above applies to you. And if you have been inactive or expired and not employed in the industry for three years or more, §35.141(d) requires current training certificates to be submitted to the department — in which case the full Level 3 commissioned officer course is more likely the right purchase than a renewal.

One more worth flagging before you start: §35.182 gives military service members two additional years to complete a continuing education requirement or any other renewal-related requirement, and §35.181 waives late-renewal penalty fees for them. The rules themselves are public in 37 TAC Chapter 35, licensing questions belong with the Texas DPS Private Security Bureau, and if your situation does not match any line above, start with our frequently asked questions.