Hey Scott, a big 
I think you’re dead on here. I went through this thread and your blog entry and Dr. Mayer’s blog entry and some of the Wiki discussion (ick), and I do not see any direct connection between student vacancies and problems with the board of directors. What evidence is there linking the two? After all, the school is still accredited (even if it’s only for two years – that’s two years to clean up their act), and the quality of education there is still said to be quite high.
Maybe it’s time to pull out Occam’s Razor and give this thread a nice clean shave.
Ay, there’s the rub! Far fewer expat families are coming to Taiwan on business assignments. A very simple explanation. Here’s another. Dr. C, you mentioned first-time-ever sudden vacancies in “grades 1, 3, 4, 5” instead of former 200+ wait lists. Earlier this evening, I posted [url=Taiwan's falling birth rate - #38 by smell_the_glove about the effects of Taiwan’s falling birth rate on elementary schools (I’d thought at first to put the info here, but decided it was more appropriate over there since it’s more general). The point is that the situation you described is hardly unique to TAS. In short, far fewer local parents are having kids (this includes plane hopping to the US), and even the wealthy are rethinking the private school price tag. Aren’t the vast majority of TAS parents local? If so, doesn’t it stand to reason that TAS would also be affected? To assume otherwise strikes me as being out of touch with reality and smacks of arrogance – might even buttress the common notion of elitism at the school.
Don’t get me wrong - there may well have been parents who, because of all the shenanigans, either left TAS for greener athletic fields or decided not to send their kids there in the first place. You mentioned at least one. But I’m skeptical that internal problems alone are necessarily the major factor in sudden TAS vacancies. Schools inevitably have problems, school board meetings are notorious for high passions and infighting, staff and teachers and parents leave (sometimes even all at once in a big wave). I’m just following Scott’s lead in suggesting that there are simpler explanations. Besides, I sure don’t want to get dragged into personal bickering and administrative problems and internal politics at TAS, especially when none of it appears to relate to the central question posed by the OP. Or parenting.
So back to the OP. And parenting. I’d like to ask for a little more clarification from Dr. C.
You say TAS is looking for English-speaking kids, but what exactly do you mean by “English-speaking” (especially since later, you referred to “native English speaking kids” and “American cultural background”)? You’ve established the passport prerequisite, but the “false foreigner” workaround is well known (parents are Taiwanese, kid is born in US and gets American passport and may or may not speak a word of English). If by “native” you mean children whose parents are both native English-speaking passport holders here on an expat business package, I hate to say it, but you probably already have most of them, and I doubt you’ll find many more. The numbers, after all, are dwindling.
If on the other hand you mean “mixed kids” (i.e. one Taiwanese, one native English speaking parent, kid has passport), well hell, there are plenty of them. Do they speak English better than local kids? Probably. Do they speak it as well as kids in a native English speaking country? Probably not. In fact, they may well speak more Mandarin (yeah, even in the hallways). A casual glance at the language-related threads in this forum will show you that the question of a mixed kid’s “native language” is not exactly cut and dried – instead, you’re usually looking at different degrees of bilingualism. Same goes for “cultural background.”
BTW, the issue of exit outcomes Stateside (including the ubiquitous testing that has resulted from NCLB) is a very divisive one that has pitted many boards, parents, and teachers against each other. Getting the issues out into the open means turbulence and flared tempers. That’s the nature of the beast. It’s what you do with the dialogue that counts. 