If you're new to or moving into the neighborhood, welcome; here are a few helpful tips . . .

Properties in the Skywood Acres neighborhood primarily use Comcast as it is most the most available service here - AT&T phone service is available but not AT&T DSL service. As Comcast does have infrequent outages (~ 12 to 36 hours a year) Starlink satellite service, is another option, but is somewhat pricey.  As of spring 2021, Comcast was about $100 a month for 800 Mbit/sec down and 40 Mbit/sec up whereas as of Q3 2023, for $120/month, Starlink basic yields 85Mbit/sec down and 15 Mbit/sec up.

 There's a private Skywood Association members only email list on Google Groups  for general discussions and a separate low-volume list for emergency preparedness. There's Nextdoor Woodside as well, but it's not specific to our neighborhood.

For local road and traffic information, check out this X (formerly Twitter) account . Signing up for the SMC Alert system is a good idea. There is a fledgling neighborhood watch effort with a meeting held with the San Mateo County sheriff's department in March 2018. Our most recent neighborhood crime and safety meeting with the sheriff's department was in October 2020. (The Town of Woodside has a contract with the sheriff's department to provide police services to the town.)

The closest churches to our neighborhood are the Valley Presbyterian Church, Christ Church (Episcopal) and Our Lady of the Wayside Church (Roman Catholic), all near each other on Portola Road. Christ Church is home to Carillon Preschool; Our Lady of the Wayside Church is part of the St. Denis Parish. Other nearby churches include Woodside Village Church and the Ladera Community Church (UCC). A little further away are St. Bede's Episcopal Church on Sand Hill Road, Bethany Lutheran Church near Alameda de las Pulgas, and Menlo Church and St. Raymond Catholic Church, both on Santa Cruz Avenue near Menlo Park's downtown. On the St. Raymond campus is a Catholic school with grades from junior kindergarten to 8th grade; St. Raymond also offers religious education for parishioners on Sunday mornings during the school year.

Cellular service can be spotty and is very property-dependent, often on a per carrier basis. Some residents use microcells or Wi-Fi calling to augment the native cell service.

Skywood Acres homes are part of the Skywood Association. Annual dues were $200 for 2023 (these were finally increased after about two decades at $100 a year). The Skywood Association is responsible for maintaining neighborhood mailboxes and representing neighborhood interests at civic meetings. In my experience, the Association tends to be more of a valuable neighborhood social organization; it fortunately does not police house color, design, or noise or anything like that.

Their is an automated gate connecting Skywood Way to Skyline Boulevard across a private easement that was purchased by and is administered by the Skywood Association. The gate offers a quick way onto and off of Skyline Boulevard.  The gate license fee is available to residents of the Skywood Acres and Still Creek neighborhoods.  For those who would like gate access, the gate license fee is $2,500; the fee helps recoup some of the cost of the easement and also offsets the cost of repair and maintenance of the gate; about 80 percent of the neighborhood has taken advantage of the license.

Because Skywood Acres is in the town of Woodside, we are in the Woodside Fire Protection District, along with Portola Valley, Emerald Hills, and Ladera. But our nearest fire station is the CalFire station directly across the street from our neighborhood, which is great because firefighters and paramedics can respond immediately to any emergency. Woodside Fire and CalFire have an agreement to cooperate when responding to calls in our neighborhood. The gate connecting Skywood Way to Skyline Blvd across the private easement has Knox boxes for access by emergency vehicles. (The CalFire station is operated by CalFire under contract with San Mateo County, which owns the land and the buildings.)

Here's Woodside Fire's October 2018 map of CERPP regions. We're in division 19. Here's Woodside Fire's evacuation plan for the town of Woodside, and the evacuation plan for the town of Portola Valley in case of emergencies.

You should join the South Skyline Association (SSA) ($20 annual) to be included in their Skyline Propane Users Group (SPUG) which will qualify for a significant price discount from most propane providers.

If you're living in the Skywood Acres neighborhood with children, or think you might be someday, here are some tips:

Homes in our neighborhood are in the Portola Valley School District (though of course you should double-check your property to make sure). Ormondale offers a junior kindergarten as well as K through 3rd grades. Kindergarten is half-day through February and full-day for the remainder of the school year. An on-site aftercare program called New Horizons provides optional child care every day, for a fee, until 6pm. Corte Madera is the public middle school. Woodside High is the public high school. If you send your children to Ormondale or Corte Madera, you should check out the website and join the PTO.

In 2018, voters approved Measure Z, a bond measure that will spend up to $49.5 million to upgrade the classrooms and other buildings at Ormondale and Corte Madera. It raises property taxes in our neighborhood, and other neighborhoods inside the boundaries of the school district, by $30 per $100,000 of assessed value (not market value) every year. Here's the school district's FAQ on Measure Z.

In March 2019, S&P rated the Portola Valley School District's bonds as AA+, a step below the highest AAA rating, saying: "The district serves an affluent residential area in the mountains above Silicon Valley and 37 miles south of San Francisco. Its median household effective buying income is among the highest among districts with debt that we rate, at 296% of the national level... We understand that land use restrictions make growth unlikely but, based on a state constitutional restriction on assessed valuation (AV) growth to 2% per year without a sale, we think the district's $5.4 billion AV likely understates market value to a substantial degree... Exposure to potential parcel tax revenue loss if voters do not approve a renewal, although we understand that the district has clearly identified which services the parcel tax funds and would be in a position to cut back on such services should it lose this funding....

Nearby private schools west of I-280 are the Woodland School in Ladera (preschool through 8th grades) and Woodside Priory (6th through 12th grades). I'm told there's a bus that leaves from Woodside Road and I-280 to the Nueva School in Hillsborough. Some children attend St. Raymond Catholic Elementary School (junior kindergarten through 8th grade) and Sacred Heart, both near the border between Menlo Park and Atherton.

Preschools, starting with the closest to our neighborhood, include: Windmill School, Carillon Preschool-Christ Church, Grove Academy Preschool, Woodside Preschool (at Woodside Elementary School), Woodside Parents Nursery School, Woodland School, Ladera Community Church preschool, Trinity School in Menlo Park, University Heights Montessori Children's Center, Littlest Angels Preschool, Menlo Church Kirk House Preschool.

If you don't have a pool, your nearest and cheapest option is Ladera Rec, which is 15 minutes away in normal traffic. As of 2018, Ladera Rec has a $980 individual annual membership fee, a $1,925 family annual membership fee, and a $15 per person fee to visit if you are not a member. But Ladera Rec does not have a year-round pool; it closes for the season in October. If you know someone living in Ladera, chances are you'll see them at Ladera Rec in the summer.

If you want year-round swimming, you might want to get a job at Stanford to use their pool. Otherwise your closest options are Ladera Oaks and Alpine Hills. Both are proprietary clubs, meaning there's a fixed number of memberships. If you want to join, wait until someone leaves, and then buy in at the then-current rate (the waiting list at Alpine Hills can be a year or more). If you want to leave, you get back something like 80 percent of the fee paid when your successor buys in; once you join, you may find yourself suggesting higher initiation fees. Both Ladera Oaks and Alpine Hills offer lots of services, including year-round pools, exercise rooms with machines and free weights, social events, and a summer-only cafe (Ladera Oaks) or a year-round restaurant with mandatory monthly minimum purchases (Alpine Hills). Alpine Hills membership seems to be mostly Portola Valley and PVSD, while Ladera Oaks draws from Menlo Park as well.

Children at Ladera Oaks and Alpine Hills compete in a summer swim league with Stanford, Palo Alto's University Club, Palo Alto's Foothills Tennis and Swimming Club, and Los Altos Hills' Fremont Hills Club. This swim league is called the Peninsula Swim Association (PSA) and is open only to children who are proprietary members (full members, not associate members) of those clubs. The year-round swim league, part of USA Swimming, is open to non-members.

Swim instruction is available at Ladera Oaks and Alpine Hills in half-hour increments. You don't have to be a member to sign up for swimming lessons, though you will pay about 15 percent more.

Some after-school activities include French lessons in Ladera given by the Education Française Bay Area and the Bay Area Martial Arts Academy in Portola Valley. Many children in the neighborhood play in the fall AYSO soccer league, which is run by volunteer parents, with games at fields including Ormondale and Portola Valley Town Center. A year-round soccer option is Alpine Strikers. The local scout troop for Woodside and Portola Valley is Troop 64. There's talk of creating a Trail Life troop (unlike Boy Scout troops, Trail Life troops are open only to boys).

Summer camps west of I-280 include the well-regarded Mountain Camp Woodside in Portola Valley (both a day camp starting at rising kindergarten ages and, for older children, an overnight camp), the Decathlon Camp at Woodside Elementary School, Art & Games Summer Camp, Ladera Oaks day camp, Camp Ladera, Camp Alpine, Portola Valley Theatre Conservatory's camp, Cool Coyotes Kids Camp, and Portola Valley's Spring Down equestrian camp. On the east side of I-280, there are many, many camps in Menlo Park and Palo Alto--too many to list here. Some popular ones include Legarza basketball camp, Stanford's Camp Cardinal, Stanford's iD Tech camp, and Camp Galileo (the closest location to our neighborhood is in Menlo Park on Santa Cruz Avenue). There's also a Stanford swimming camp.