I knew about the first chapter while writing, but there's a difference: the admin woman was emphasising legal prosecution rather than actual prevention. A code of conduct is meant to prevent grooming in the first place, whereas the conversation and the televised arrest were just narrative anchors to establish the stakes if Kaede crosses the line.
That's why the first arc was so messy. Kaede handled the mystery student-admirer's confession incredibly poorly. As a queer woman, she had some sympathy for the girl, but she should've set hard professional boundaries or referred the student to a counsellor. But realistic boundaries don't make for a dramatic and compelling story.
So when it comes to the foundation being set for melodrama, I completely agree; in fact, I knew this manga was melodramatic from the very first chapter and its synopsis. The author has been pursuing melodramatic conventions from the very beginning; it's not new.
I bemoan melodrama for being a cheap way to engage the reader, but really, I enjoy the feeling of wanting to pull my hair out.
We also have it established that Kaede isn't taken seriously
at all by her students. They literally refer to her by her first name, with either -
chan or, graciously,
-sensei. And that's partly due to the fact that she's a brand-new teacher, meaning she has that lack of accumulated experience and backbone to establish her position of authority. On
top of that, we know she's rather meek just in terms of her personality. She was shy and withdrawn as a student, prone to swallowing her feelings rather than put herself out there--because the one time she did, her crush rejected her, and she wallowed for years before ultimately reconnecting and getting together with her now-girlfriend.
So in that sense, the first arc being messy was consistent with the character representation. And I think that informs how she handles the subsequent situations involving Kuritani and then Nozaki. She also did
slightly better by that point, though Nami had to step in with Nozaki at the end, all the same.
All that aside - if this played out realistically, we wouldn't have this manga. Would it be as engaging? Hard to say, as it would be extremely different from the word 'go', as even the first arc with Kaede and the secret student confession would just be her taking the advice of Itaoka, simply ignore the letter, and it would either go away or things would escalate with the student confronting Kaede, upon which she simply turns her down or gets Admin involved.
Sure, there's a chance for development of Kaede's character in some sense, but a lot of it would simply be "sending things up the chain of command" and we'd be getting a story about the rules structure of a school, and not stories about the relationships of the people within the school. Given this is a series
about relationships and all the myriad ways they can go well and go sour and be extremely volatile, trying to embed it in a "realistic system" would defeat at least some of the purpose.
And if it was done anyway...well, as I said we wouldn't the story we've been given, and I'd argue it's impossible to say whether it would be better or worse, because of how drastically different it would end up.