The most expensive mistake a Denton student can make with Level 3 is not choosing the wrong class. It is paying someone who was never allowed to teach it in the first place.

The State Wrote the Course, and the State Picks Who Teaches It

Level 3 is unusual among security classes because so little about it is left to the provider. The course material is prepared by and obtained from the Texas Department of Public Safety. A school delivers the state’s content rather than its own, and it may only do so if it is a DPS-approved school and the person teaching is a DPS-approved instructor. Both halves of that have to be true at once. An approved school with an unapproved instructor has not run a valid Level 3 course, and an unapproved organization running DPS material has not either.

What makes this catch people out is that the rules are looser one level down. A licensed security company may use its own designee to deliver Level 2 training to its own officers in-house, which is how a great many unarmed officers around Denton County were trained. Level 3 has no in-house designee option at all. Nobody’s employer, however large or well established, can shortcut it internally. If you have been told otherwise, the person telling you is describing the wrong course.

So the check before you enrol anywhere is short: ask whether the provider is an approved school, ask whether the instructor is approved, and ask in plain terms what the fee does and does not cover. A provider that cannot answer those three questions crisply is not a provider worth your money. Licensing details and school status sit with the Texas DPS Private Security Bureau.

Who Needs the Course, and What It Is Not

Under 37 TAC §35.141(a)(2), Level 3 training is required for anyone seeking a security officer commission, which is the credential that permits an officer to carry a firearm on duty, and for personal protection officers. The course is not the commission itself. DPS issues the commission on application, and §35.81(a) requires that application to include copies of both the Level 2 and the Level 3 certificates of completion plus the other items DPS lists, so keep the older certificate somewhere you can find it.

It is also not Level 4. That is a distinct course for personal protection officers, the bodyguard credential, with a minimum of fifteen classroom hours under §35.141(a)(3). Level 3 is the commissioned security officer course and nothing about finishing it makes you a personal protection officer.

Classroom First, Range Second

The course runs in two parts. Part 1 is the classroom material: the law governing armed security work, use of force, the duties that attach to a commission, and the written exam. ETXSTA delivers Part 1 100% online, and the price of the online course covers the online training only. Part 2 is in person, defensive tactics, firearms handling and a firearms proficiency exam, and the in-person firearms qualification is scheduled separately and is not included in the online fee. Nothing in the online half involves handling a firearm, which is exactly as it should be.

Both parts have to be passed properly. Under §35.144(c) the minimum passing grade on Level 3 and Level 4 school examinations is 75%, which is a higher bar than the Texas License to Carry written test. A detail that regularly surprises students who arrive confident because they already hold an LTC. On the range the familiarity works in their favor instead: the firearms proficiency exam is close to identical in format to the LTC proficiency exam, and under §35.145 the qualification may use the DPS Primary Issued Handgun Qualification Course or the DPS Approved LTC Course. §35.146 additionally sets out a shotgun course of fire for commissioned officers, so qualifying with a shotgun alongside a handgun is an option rather than an obligation.

Denton’s Armed Security Market

Denton sits at the top of the DFW metroplex where the prairie is still visible between the growth, and its security work reflects a genuinely mixed economy: two large universities and their surrounding student housing, a hospital and medical office corridor, manufacturing and distribution operations spreading south along I‑35, plus the retail, banking and event venues that follow that population. Armed posts locally lean toward healthcare, financial branches, industrial sites and gated corporate or residential property. Because a commission attaches to the officer rather than to any one employer, Denton students routinely carry it across contracts in Lewisville, Sanger and the wider county without repeating the training.

When you qualify, the school issues your certificate of completion, referred to as PSP 30, and under §35.147 it must do so within seven days of qualifying, keeping training records for 24 months afterwards. Once you are commissioned, the armed security renewal course is what keeps it current. If you want to read the rules directly they are published as 37 TAC Chapter 35, and our class list lays out the full progression from unarmed to commissioned and beyond.