An Amarillo officer sits down to file his renewal, pulls out the completion record from a continuing education bundle he bought online months ago, and finds out it will not serve. The hours were real. They were just the wrong hours, from the wrong source.

That scenario plays out more often than it should, and it is not a sign of carelessness. Plenty of professions let you assemble continuing education from whatever approved sources you can find. Texas private security does not work that way for armed officers, and the rule is unusually specific about it.

Where the Hours Come From Is Part of the Requirement

§35.161(g) of the Texas Administrative Code sets the obligation: commissioned security officers and personal protection officers complete six hours of continuing education, satisfied by completing the renewal portions of the Level III or IV training course, as applicable. It then adds the condition that decides your case. All of that continuing education must be taught by department-approved training schools and instructors. And for a commissioned security officer, a firearms proficiency certificate must be submitted with the renewal application.

Your employer’s in-house program does not reach you

§35.162(d) is explicit that 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. A well-run internal training department can still be valuable to you professionally. It cannot produce these six hours.

Outside credits do not either

§35.162(f) states that continuing education credits earned through outside entities may not be used to satisfy the requirement for commissioned security officers or personal protection officers. Between those two provisions the field narrows to one option: an approved school teaching the renewal portion of the right course. The text is worth reading yourself in 37 TAC Chapter 35.

A Window, Not a Cycle

There is a second way to end up holding hours you cannot use, and it has nothing to do with the provider. §35.161(n) makes continuing education valid only if completed within the two-year period preceding the license’s current expiration date. Officers who like to get ahead of things sometimes complete training before that window opens and are genuinely astonished to learn it does not carry forward. Paired with §35.161(a), which bars submitting the renewal application until the minimum hours are earned, the sequencing is tight at both ends.

The Range Side of Renewal

Our renewal training runs 100% online, and that is the classroom component. Understand the boundary before you enroll: the price covers the online training only, and the in-person firearms qualification is not included. You schedule that separately once the online portion is behind you.

One range item officers ask about specifically: if a shotgun is involved, §35.146(b) provides for a biennial familiarization of six rounds of “00” buckshot in connection with renewal of a commissioned security officer. That is the shotgun rule as written, and it applies in the shotgun context only. It is not a general additional requirement layered on every renewal.

One Pathway, Two Separate Licenses

Because §35.161(g) addresses both, this renewal serves the commissioned security officer at Level 3 and the personal protection officer at Level 4. Those are two credentials, not two grades of one. Level 4 is the personal protection officer, the close protection specialty, and it renews through the renewal portion of the Level 4 course, just as Level 3 renews through its own. Meanwhile, anyone working unarmed on a Level 2 non-commissioned license owes no continuing education whatsoever; §35.161(b) exempts noncommissioned security officers by name.

Distance Is the Panhandle Problem

Amarillo is a long way from most of the state’s training capacity, and the officers working here know it. The nearest classroom option can be hours of interstate driving in each direction, across country where weather closes roads without much warning. Armed posts in this market lean toward the things the Panhandle actually runs on: beef processing and agricultural facilities, freight and cold-storage distribution along the I‑40 and I‑27 corridors, hospitals and medical campuses, energy and utility infrastructure out on the plains. Those are shift operations, and six hours of classroom time is not easy to extract from a rotation.

What You Walk Away Holding

• A certificate of completion for the renewal course, listed on our site as PSP 31.
• Under §35.162(b)(3), that certificate of attendance shows your name and license number, the date of attendance, the number of hours and the courses attended, signed and dated by the school director. The school keeps its records for two years.
• Under §35.161(m), you keep your certificates for two years and furnish copies to the department on request.
• Under §35.161(a), your employer maintains proof in your personnel file and you indicate completion on the renewal application.

Two Situations That Change the Answer

Service members have more room than most people realize: §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. Separately, §35.141(d) requires someone inactive or expired who has not been employed in the industry for three years or more to submit current training certificates to the department. In which case the full Level 3 course rather than the renewal may be what you need.

Licensing questions belong with the Texas DPS Private Security Bureau; training questions, and the ones about which class fits your situation, are covered on our FAQ page.