Longview is home ground for East Texas Security Training Academy, so we field these calls in person as often as online: and they arrive from four recognizably different people. Here is each one, answered.

Armed security work in Gregg County has a particular shape to it. There are the oilfield service yards and pipe storage lots scattered through the piney woods between here and Kilgore, where the post is a gate and a fence line and the asset is equipment sitting overnight. There are the hospital systems and their outlying clinics, which have their own tempo and their own rules about what an officer does. There is the freight and manufacturing base strung along the I‑20 corridor and the rail lines, and there is the ordinary retail, school and municipal work that any city of this size generates. An officer here will often hold two or three of those posts across a career, and the renewal obligation follows the officer through every one of them.

Four People, Four Answers

The officer who is on time

You owe six hours of continuing education under §35.161(g), and the rule tells you how to get them: by completing the renewal portions of the Level III or Level IV training course, as applicable. The hours must be taught by department-approved training schools and instructors, and a commissioned security officer must submit a firearms proficiency certificate with the renewal application.

Then get the timing right, because this is the one that quietly costs people a class. §35.161(n) says continuing education is valid only if completed within the two-year period preceding the license’s current expiration date. It is a window tied to your expiration date, not a two-year rhythm you keep on your own calendar. And under §35.161(a) the renewal application may not be submitted until the minimum hours are earned, so the order is fixed: hours, then application.

The officer who let it slide

People step away from armed work for all kinds of ordinary reasons. A better-paying stint in the oil patch, a move, a stretch of family obligation. The question is how long the gap ran. §35.141(d) provides that someone inactive or expired who has not been employed in the industry for three years or more must submit current training certificates to the department. Past that mark, the six-hour renewal is usually not the right purchase and the full Level 3 commissioned officer course is. Short of it, the renewal course still does the job.

If the gap was military service, stop before you assume you are behind. §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 service members. It is one of the least-cited provisions in the chapter and one of the most useful.

The officer who changed employers

This is the most common call we get in East Texas, because contracts here turn over with the local economy. An officer who spent two years on a yard gate outside Gladewater and then moved to a hospital campus in town wants to know whose records count. Both of these apply at once: §35.161(a) makes the employer responsible for maintaining proof in the employee’s personnel file, with the licensee indicating completion on the renewal application; §35.161(m) makes you responsible for keeping your certificates of completion for two years and furnishing copies to the department on request. The employer’s file is not a substitute for yours. When you leave a company, leave with your own copies.

The companion misconception is that a big employer can handle the hours internally. Not for armed officers. §35.162(d) says the in-house continuing education 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 credits earned through outside entities may not be used for them. Whoever you work for, the hours come from an approved school.

The unarmed officer who was told to renew too

You may have been handed a renewal reminder you do not owe. §35.161(b) specifically exempts noncommissioned security officers from continuing education. If you hold a Level 2 license and work unarmed, this course is not yours, though it is the course you will owe later if you move up to a commission.

Level 3 and Level 4 Are Not the Same Ladder

One renewal pathway, two credentials. Level 3 is the commissioned security officer, authorized to carry on post. Level 4 is the personal protection officer, executive protection, the bodyguard credential, and it is a different license, not a promotion from Level 3. §35.161(g) covers both and points each to the renewal portion of its own course. Job postings blur this constantly; the rule does not.

How We Run It, and What You Walk Away With

• The classroom portion is 100% online: which matters more than it sounds when six hours has to fit around nights on a gate.
• The price covers online training only. The in-person firearms qualification is not included and is scheduled separately after the online course.
• You receive a certificate of completion, referred to on our site as PSP 31.
• §35.162(b)(3) governs what that certificate contains: your name and license number, date of attendance, number of hours, and courses attended, signed and dated by the school director. The school retains its records for two years.
• Shotgun-qualified officers should note §35.146(b), which sets a biennial familiarization of six rounds of “00” buckshot in connection with renewal of a commissioned security officer.

None of this is our reading of the law standing in for the law. The text is public in 37 TAC Chapter 35, and applications and license status live with the Texas DPS Private Security Bureau. If none of the four descriptions above is quite you, our FAQ covers the awkward cases and the full course list shows everything we teach.