For me participation in South Kingstown municipal government and school administration starts with awareness. What is happening right now in town and school? For example, did you know that the engineering drawings for the bathrooms on main st & bike path are complete and implementation is waiting on state funding (promised but now on hold)? Perhaps you are an avid bike path user and want to see the bathrooms built in place of buying more open land this year. Being aware of bike path activities would empower you to advocate for this construction. (The town, by the way, already has been able to set aside 29% of the available land for open-space.) When you are aware of what is being considered and what is being acted upon as early as possible then you don't feel blind sided when the change happens nor do you feel that nothing is happening.
You need to be able to subscribe to specific issues, categories of issues, and full text searches of issues. When new data is added to an issue -- a fact, a comment, a data set, a PDF, a GIS layer, etc -- you will be automatically notified. For some issues you want just a weekly summary sent in email on Saturday morning. For other issues you want detail emailed ASAP and an text message sent now.