It’s hard to come up with a circumstance and a buy-in where you can still have Star Trek adventures with real stakes and real peril, but it’s also a school.
is it though? they've done it in the past on previous shows. Kirk and the Kobiashi Maru, Picard getting stabbed in the back, Tom Paris, Wesley and his classmates who got that one kid killed, etc, etc, etc.
Just make it DS9 in San Fransisco.