A renewal question almost always arrives attached to a situation. Pick yours from the three below and the rest of this page is written for you: League City officers turn up in all three.

1. Your commission is current and you want the six hours done before the date lands.
2. Your commission already expired, or it has been sitting inactive for a while.
3. You changed employers and no longer know whose file your training lives in.

If You Are Current: Get the Window Right

The requirement itself is short. Under §35.161(g), commissioned security officers and personal protection officers complete six hours of continuing education, satisfied by completing the renewal portions of the Level III or Level IV training course, as applicable, and all of it must be taught by department-approved training schools and instructors. A commissioned security officer must also submit a firearms proficiency certificate with the renewal application.

The part worth slowing down for is when. §35.161(n) makes continuing education valid only if completed within the two-year period preceding the license’s current expiration date. Officers who describe this as “renew every two years” usually mean well and occasionally end up with hours that do not apply to the renewal in front of them. Meanwhile §35.161(a) blocks the other end: the renewal application may not be submitted before the minimum hours are earned. Being early is not a virtue here; being inside the window is.

If It Already Lapsed: How Far Back Did It Go?

There is one rule that decides whether a six-hour course is enough. §35.141(d) provides that a person who is inactive or expired and has not been employed in the industry for three years or more must submit current training certificates to the department. If you have been out that long, plan on the full Level 3 commissioned security officer course instead of the renewal. If you have been working the whole time and simply missed a date, the renewal course is still your path.

Served in the military during that gap? §35.182 gives service members two additional years to complete continuing education or any other renewal-related requirement, and §35.181 waives late-renewal penalty fees for them. Around a community with as many veterans and NASA-area contractors as this one, that provision is relevant more often than you would guess, and it is not something most employers bring up unprompted.

If You Switched Employers: The License Is Yours, So Is the Paperwork

Armed posts in this stretch of the Gulf Coast move around. Medical campuses, marina and waterfront developments, petrochemical support operations up the Bay Area corridor toward Houston, and the retail and residential build-out that came with the county’s growth. Officers follow the contracts. Two provisions decide what happens to your records when you do. §35.161(a) says proof of continuing education is maintained by the employer in the employee’s personnel file and that you indicate completion on the renewal application. §35.161(m) says you keep certificates of completion for two years and furnish copies to the department on request. The second one does not go away when you hand in a badge and a shirt.

A related trap: larger companies sometimes run continuing education in-house for their unarmed staff and assume it covers everyone. It does not. §35.162(d) says that in-house exemption for companies with ten or more licensed employees does not apply to commissioned security officers or personal protection officers, and §35.162(f) says outside-entity credits may not be used for them either. Whichever company you are with now, your six hours come from an approved school.

Two Credentials, One Renewal Route

This course serves both the Level 3 commissioned security officer and the Level 4 personal protection officer. They are distinct credentials, Level 4 is the personal protection, or bodyguard, license, not a senior version of a commissioned officer, and each renews through the renewal portion of its own course. Plenty of Texas job postings blur the two. The rule does not. And if you work unarmed on a Level 2 license, §35.161(b) exempts noncommissioned security officers from continuing education entirely.

Practical Notes Before You Enroll

• The course is delivered 100% online, so the six hours can be split around a shift rotation.
• The price covers online training only; the in-person firearms qualification is not included and is scheduled separately once the online portion is done.
• Your certificate of completion is referred to on our site as PSP 31.
• Per §35.162(b)(3), a continuing education certificate shows your name and license number, date of attendance, hours, and courses attended, signed and dated by the school director; the school keeps its records two years.
• Shotgun-qualified officers: §35.146(b) sets a biennial familiarization of six rounds of “00” buckshot in connection with renewal of a commissioned security officer.

Everything cited here is in 37 TAC Chapter 35, and the licensing process itself runs through the Texas DPS Private Security Bureau. Still unsure which of the three situations is yours? The FAQ works through the edge cases, and our full class list shows what else we offer.