Cy-Fair ISD Board to Update Ethics Policy After Accusations of Secret Recordings

As if the Cypress-Fairbanks ISD school board races weren’t contentious enough, new accusations against the board’s vice president arose this week, as community members, including the wife of a trustee and a former GOP precinct chair, have accused Natalie Blasingame of secretly recording conversations they believed were private.

While the recordings are not illegal, CFISD trustees have signaled that trust is broken. The board will discuss its standard operating procedures at a September 4 workshop and vote on it the following week. They’ll specifically be addressing audio recordings, said Blasingame, who said she thinks she’s being targeted by the proposal but is fine with it. Agendas for the upcoming meetings had not been posted at press time.

Blasingame admitted to taping the conversations, saying she records people who have falsely accused her or lied about her in the past.

“When there’s evidence and proof that [people] have lied about me, then I do that to protect myself,” she said. “I never intend to share them, but if I have to, I can. I was the one who admitted I taped, remember? I said I taped. I’ve only recorded people who have falsely accused me and admitted to lying.”

Filed under the “you can’t make this stuff up” category, the saga doesn’t end with the recordings. Damon Lenahan, who describes himself as Blasingame’s best friend, said that after the secretly taped conversations, he sent threatening text messages to the people who were recorded.

“Natalie has never threatened anybody,” he said. “I made the threats that [the recordings] would be made public because they were making public the false allegations that they’d already [denounced as false].”

As a result of one of those threats, Bethany Scanlon, the wife of CFISD trustee Lucas Scanlon, removed a Facebook post that said she was no longer supporting Blasingame in her bid for re-election.

On Wednesday, Blasingame said she didn’t direct Lenahan to send the texts or have any knowledge of his doing that until after the fact. In that phone interview, Blasingame talked a lot and she talked fast. She was pleasant, wanting to discuss childhood literacy and underserved populations rather than party politics and taped conversations.

“Let’s do the business of the school district, which is educating our children,” she said. “All of this is smoke and mirrors and a distraction from getting the work done.”

Since Blasingame, a Christian nationalist, was elected to a four-year unpaid term in 2021, she’s led charges to remove sections of curriculum that refer to vaccines and climate change. She’s supported book bans. She’s fought to have chaplains in classrooms. Until recently, she’s been largely supported by her fellow board members, who typically vote in lockstep with her in a 6-1 conservative majority.

Historically, the Texas Education Agency has not looked favorably upon school boards that are known for public infighting, citing open discord among Houston ISD trustees as part of their assessment of the district prior to the state takeover in 2023.

Signs that the Cy-Fair board was fracturing were revealed when candidates began filing for a November 4 election.

Instead of running for the seat she currently holds, Blasingame filed to challenge board president Scott Henry, who had been an ally on the board but lost the Harris County GOP endorsement this year because, according to a district parent, he didn’t support school chaplains. Prairie View A&M University professor Cleveland Lane Jr. has also joined the Place 6 race, running on a pro-public schools slate hoping to oust the “extremist” incumbents.

Blasingame said she believes the board did some good work together following her election in 2021 and when new conservative members were elected in 2023 but now the district’s challenges should be tackled by the candidates who are up for the task: the three endorsed by the Harris County Republican Party, Radele Walker for Place 5, Blasingame for Place 6, and George Edwards for Place 7.

“I think the people who are elected officials in leadership in the area have given their vote of confidence to the three of us,” Blasingame said. “I feel like I have the best chance to win against another incumbent, because I’m also an incumbent. I chose to take the harder race on.”

According to Bethany Scanlon, she and Jeff Ivey, both Republican Party precinct chairs, met with Blasingame in mid-April to discuss the candidate’s re-election campaign.

It’s unclear what exactly was said during the mid-April meeting at a coffee shop but Bethany Scanlon said she thought it was a casual conversation among friends. About two weeks after the gathering, some CFISD trustees said Blasingame “admitted that she secretly recorded the conversation at the meeting with Bethany and Jeff without their knowledge.”

In August, Bethany Scanlon posted on Facebook that she could not support Blasingame’s re-election bid and would instead be endorsing Scott Henry.

“I regarded Natalie as a friend (she ran on a Republican slate in 2021 with my husband) but because of some behaviors towards my family and as a Trustee, I cannot support her for re-election,” Bethany Scanlon wrote in a now-deleted social media post. “This is not a choice I take lightly. I have shed many tears over this horrible situation.”

Later that day, Bethany Scanlon claims she received a series of text messages from Lenahan, who is known in the community as Blasingame’s boyfriend. Lenahan demanded she remove the social media post, referring to her “and her cohorts” as “pieces of crap,” and said he’d encouraged Blasingame to press charges.

“Do you understand I will post this communication and have everyone I know circulate it on social media so that everyone knows what horrible character the Scanlons have?” one message states. “You do realize God cannot and will not tolerate what you have done and are doing to Natalie?”

Lenahan said he sent the message because its author was bringing up false allegations.

“They were alluding to it,” he said. “They weren’t coming out and saying it exactly. What that tells you is that they had already perpetuated this lie in the community and they were keeping it alive — and the person who was keeping it alive was the person who called up and said it was a lie. They’re doing it for the purpose to discredit Natalie.”

Lenahan said Blasingame is a darling of Cy-Fair ISD, a retired educator who has held administrative positions in Houston, Spring Branch and Alief ISDs, but she’s drawn some negative attention from people who don’t like her exposing corruption and asking questions about excessive spending in the district.

Lenahan added that when someone makes what he believes to be a false allegation against an elected official, they should be prepared to be called out in public.

“If you’re going to do that, I’m going to defend and show what the truth is by that person’s own words,” he said.

Three additional people reached out to the Press on Wednesday after hearing that this story was in the works, saying they had received threatening comments from Lenahan on their Facebook posts. 

When reached for comment, Bethany Scanlon said she felt like she was ambushed during her meeting with Blasingame.  She emailed the following statement on the matter to the Houston Press,  published in its entirety.

I have been told I was recorded. Those recordings have not been shared with me. I cannot authenticate if it was me on the recordings or not. I believe a Trustee recording me multiple times without my knowledge is a breach of trust. How many people has Trustee Natalie Blasingame recorded without their permission? My opinion is that Natalie’s boyfriend is threatening to use those recordings against my family because he wants to create a false narrative in order to win a campaign for his girlfriend.

In the text message exchange with Ivey, dated August 8, Lenahan asks if Scott Henry is running for school board even though he wasn’t chosen by the precinct chairs. Ivey repeatedly asks, “Who is this?” and after Lenahan answers with his name, Ivey asks, “Who are you?”

“A concerned citizen of CFISD who is going to save you some trouble,” Lenahan replies. “I think you may want to talk to me because you are involved in something that may become quite public soon. Your choice. One chance. Yes or no. No hiding behind a keyboard anymore.”

Ivey then messaged, “I am not a good one to threaten. Do whatever you think is best. I don’t care.”

Ivey said in a phone interview Wednesday that he doesn’t understand why he’s been dragged into this. He resigned his position with the Harris County Republican Party earlier this week. “I don’t want to be a part of it,” he said. “I think it’s a circus.”

There’s nothing that Lenahan could make public that would harm him, Ivey said.

“I welcome the tape to be released, and I want the entire tape to be released if they’re going to do it,” he said. “I think that [Blasingame] would have to answer for some of her opinions and some of the words that she used and it may be uncomfortable for her.”

There’s a certain amount of trust that is extended in personal and professional relationships, Ivey added.

“If I was a member of that board and I had somebody recording my conversations that I didn’t know about and I had confided in them, maybe my intentions or how my campaign was going to run, any kind of a strategy that I want to keep confidential, as a respected peer, I think that loss of trust would cause disharmony on the board,” he said. “I think it would cause everyone to be guarded and I think it would cause the board to really not be able to operate as a well-oiled machine.”

Texas is a “one-party consent” state, meaning it is not illegal to record a conversation if at least one person involved in the discussion approves. This is true both in person and over the phone, according to the Texas State Law Library.

Blasingame said the effort by trustees to alter procedures on audio recordings isn’t necessarily direct evidence that there’s a rift or a lack of trust among board members. A rift already existed, she said.

“If you look at the voting in the past, it’s very clear who votes together,” she said. “It’s very clear that the women have been sidelined. This isn’t about a rift. This is about the work of the district getting done and me fighting for the things I believe in.”