In recent years, publically funded prekindergarten (preK) programs have expanded rapidly in the US Amid promises that preK will help close the achievement gap and provide significant economic returns to individuals and society, many states have embraced the preK movement, developing policies to create new publically-funded programs in public schools and community early childhood education (ECE) sites like childcare centers, Head Start classrooms, and preschools (Barnett, Carolan, Squires, & Clarke Brown, 2013). This dissertation examines preK policy implementation the urban school district of Lakeville, Wisconsin. PreK in Wisconsin is called four-year-old kindergarten, or 4K. To understand what 4K policy did in Lakeville, I conducted an ethnographic investigation of the work of three 4K teachers located in three different institutions. I examine how these teachers understood and enacted the policy, and what policy came to mean to them and their institution. I find that the district policy, in positioning 4K as “real school” and distinct from ECE, reshaped relationships and hierarchies within and across institutions and made inequalities between ECE and public school teachers increasingly visible and relevant. This had very real effects on teachers’ job satisfaction, school district-community site relations, and the structure of early childhood education in Lakeville, with serious implications for the status of ECE teachers, families’ access to ECE programs, and children’s early education experiences.