Ask around a Lewisville break room and someone will tell you that your Level 2 “expires” and you have to keep taking classes to hold on to it. That is not what the rule says, and the correction is in your favor.

The Continuing Education Myth

Here is the actual provision: under §35.161(b), noncommissioned security officers are specifically exempt from continuing education requirements. Not reduced, not deferred. Exempt. If you are working unarmed on a non-commissioned license, there is no annual hour count to accumulate, no CE provider to shop for, and no recurring class to schedule around your shifts.

The confusion is understandable, because the commissioned side of the industry does carry continuing education, and the two get mashed together in conversation. Officers who move up and take the Level 3 course for a commission pick up that obligation and satisfy it through the armed renewal course. Unarmed officers simply do not inherit it. You can check the wording yourself in 37 TAC Chapter 35.

While We Are Correcting Things

“There is a firearms portion at the end.”

There is not. Level 2 is the unarmed course from start to finish. No firearms training and no firearms qualification is part of it, and it does not by itself authorize you to carry on duty or produce a commission. What it does cover is Texas security law, the professional responsibilities of a security officer, emergency procedures, and ethics, from material prepared or approved by the Texas Department of Public Safety.

“It is basically a License to Carry for work.”

Different animal entirely. An LTC is a personal permit; a security officer license is an occupational credential administered by the Texas DPS Private Security Bureau that lets you be paid to do this work. One does not stand in for the other in either direction.

“My company will just sign me off.”

Nearly right, and worth getting precise. Level 2 may legitimately be taught by the licensee’s own designated person as an alternative to a DPS-approved school with a DPS-approved instructor: that comes from §35.141(a)(1) together with §35.142 and §35.143. So the in-house path is real. What is not real is being “signed off” without the course actually happening and a certificate actually being issued. It is also specific to this level: Level 3 has no in-house option at all.

What You End Up Holding

A certificate of completion, PSP 36, which is submitted with your license application. Under §35.141(a)(1) the training must be completed by anyone applying for a non-commissioned security officer license, and it is simultaneously the required first step if a commission is somewhere in your longer plan. Two purposes, one course.

Lewisville Is a Good Market for an Unarmed License

Sitting where it does in the north half of the Metroplex, Lewisville has the mix that keeps non-commissioned officers busy: distribution and fulfillment centers along the I‑35E corridor needing gate and dock access control, office parks and corporate campuses needing lobby and badge-desk coverage, big retail centers, hospitals and clinics, apartment communities, and event and venue work that spikes around the lake and the wider DFW calendar. Very little of that is armed work. A non-commissioned license is the credential that makes you hireable across the whole list, and because the license follows the officer rather than the employer, moving between Lewisville, Flower Mound, Denton or Carrollton costs you nothing.

East Texas Security Training Academy delivers Level 2 100% online. If anything above contradicts what you were told on a job site, our FAQ page is the fastest place to settle it, and the full class list lays out where each course sits in the progression.