Supervisors in Grand Prairie tend to track renewal as a single date on a spreadsheet. It is actually five steps in a fixed order, and the date is only the last of them.

The Order Of Operations

1. Establish which credential you actually hold. Commissioned security officer, or personal protection officer.
2. Check your expiration date and work backward to find the window your hours have to land in.
3. Complete six hours of continuing education through an approved school, in the renewal portion of the course matching your credential.
4. Complete the in-person firearms qualification and obtain the proficiency certificate, if you are commissioned.
5. Only then submit the renewal application, indicating completion on it, with the proof filed where the rule says it belongs.

Step One. Two Credentials, One Pathway

This step exists because job postings across the metroplex routinely run the two together as if they were one ladder. They are not. Level 3 is the commissioned security officer, authorized to carry a firearm on post. Level 4 is the personal protection officer. The personal protection credential, with its own course. They are separate licenses that happen to share a renewal pathway, because §35.161(g) covers both and points each officer at the renewal portions of the Level III or IV training course, as applicable. Knowing which one you hold determines which renewal portion you sit.

Worth saying plainly at this step: if you work unarmed on a Level 2 non-commissioned license, you are not in this process at all. §35.161(b) specifically exempts noncommissioned security officers from continuing education.

Step Two. Work Backward From The Expiration Date

§35.161(n) makes continuing education valid only if completed within the two-year period preceding the license’s current expiration date. That is a window, and the window is anchored to your expiration date, not to the calendar or to when your employer happened to run training. Anyone managing a roster of armed posts across several sites is really managing a set of individual windows, each one different, which is why a single annual training day rarely satisfies everybody on it.

Step Three. Six Hours, From A School The Department Approved

§35.161(g) sets the requirement at six hours of continuing education and requires that it be taught by department-approved training schools and instructors. For armed officers that requirement is airtight from two directions. §35.162(d) removes the in-house option: the 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) removes the outside option: credits earned through outside entities may not be used to satisfy their continuing education requirement. A large contract firm can run whatever internal program it likes, and it still will not count as these six hours.

Our renewal course covers this step 100% online, which matters in a city like Grand Prairie where armed assignments cluster around event venues, logistics and distribution facilities near the airport corridor, manufacturing plants and large retail centers. All of them staffed on rotations that do not naturally leave a free weekday.

Step Four. The Qualification Is A Separate Booking

§35.161(g) also requires that a commissioned security officer submit a firearms proficiency certificate with the renewal application. Because of that, our enrollment covers the online training only: the in-person firearms qualification is not included and is scheduled separately once the online portion is done. Build that second appointment into the timeline rather than discovering it at step five. Shotgun-carrying officers should also account for §35.146(b), which sets a biennial familiarization of six rounds of “00” buckshot in connection with renewal of a commissioned security officer.

Step Five. File, And File The Paperwork Correctly

Under §35.161(a) the application may not be submitted until the required minimum hours have been earned; proof must be maintained by the employer in the employee’s personnel file; and the licensee indicates completion on the renewal application. Alongside that, §35.161(m) makes the attendee keep certificates of completion for two years and furnish copies to the department on request. Your certificate, ours is listed as PSP 31, should show, per §35.162(b)(3), your name and license number, the date of attendance, the number of hours and the courses attended, signed and dated by the school director.

When The Sequence Does Not Apply

If you have been inactive or expired and not employed in the industry for three years or more, §35.141(d) requires you to submit current training certificates to the department, and the full Level 3 commissioned security officer course is usually the correct starting point instead of a renewal. And §35.182 gives military service members two additional years to complete a continuing education requirement or any other renewal-related requirement, with §35.181 waiving late-renewal penalty fees for them. A provision that quietly rescues a fair number of licenses.

Every rule cited here can be read in full at 37 TAC Chapter 35; applications and license status sit with the Texas DPS Private Security Bureau; and our common questions page handles the cases this sequence does not cover neatly.