Parking Ticket Warning to School Parents!!

This morning while dropping my child off at Mendenhall, Officer Trebejo, Badge 37 pulled me over and issued me a ticket for dropping my child off in the red zone.  Usually I pull up to the yellow drop off zone, but my child was running very late this morning and asked me to pull over closer to the classroom, which, unfortunately was in the red zone.  I'm not blaming him, I'm not even blaming the officer, however, I am offended and a little shocked at her actions.  First, she had those big flashing lights going, and she never turned them off.  You can imagine how humiliating that can be.  I felt like a criminal, but was clueless as to what I did.  Then she came over to my car and asked me if I knew I was parking in a red zone.  I told her I wasn't parking - I never turned off my engine nor left my car - I was there behind the wheel with the engine running for approximately 25 seconds at most before safely entering the flow of traffic again.  It didn't matter, she just went and ran my information back at her humongous truck - with the lights still flashing - came back to my car, advised me that the red zone existed because of the "invisible crosswalk" --- really?  Seriously?  Then she gave me a ticket for $53, told me to pay it in 10 days and said "Have a nice day," while she sauntered away.  She could have given me a warning, or at least let me explain myself.  I'm a single mom with no financial assistance other than my hard earned money from work so $53 may as well be $500.  There's nothing I can do based on the code section - it states that you shall not STOP, PARK OR STAND...really it does!  But I thought I would give all of you good hard working parents a heads up out there - DON'T DROP YOUR CHILD OFF AT THE RED ZONE - no matter how late you are or how much your child begs.  Thank you Livermore Police Department for destroying my morning.  Parents - you've been kindly warned.