Even if you flunked physics, you understand the concept that for every action, there is a reaction.

Ask the teachers in Detroit if they get it.

All day Wednesday last week and well into the wee hours of the morning the reaction among GOP House members was over the top as they blasted the teachers for staging a two day “sick-out.”

Some Democrats in this town defended the job action because teachers were upset that they might not be paid this summer. But there were no crocodile tears in the Republican ranks.

“Emotions were running very high,” confides an insider in the governor’s office which is on a mission to eliminate the deficit in the Detroit schools and install some reforms to watch over the millions of dollars the governor wants to spend to do that.

And as the day wore on, the emotions clearly played a role in the final package that was adopted.

Union leaders call it union busting.

Based on the following elements, you can decide if they are correct.

Persons without a teacher’s certificate could teach.

The old contract the teacher’s had would be wiped out as the state creates a new school district under state control for two more years.

Teachers could not negotiate the school calendar.

The time-honored tradition of basing salary on seniority would be abolished in favor of merit pay.

Current teachers would have to reapply for their jobs under the new system and some argue that amounts to firing all the teachers with no guarantee they would get their jobs back.

For every action, there is a reaction.

The cooler heads around town suggest when all the emotions die down, the legislature will get around to finding a different approach to solving the DPS mess. But that remains a work in progress.

An interesting side bar story on all this pits the charter school backers against the Mayor of Detroit, lots of Democrats and even some senate Republicans who last March voted for the Detroit Education Commission or the DEC.

The charters were loathed to embrace that because the panel, appointed by Mayor Mike Duggan, would have had the power to open and shutter all schools including charters.

Once the West Michigan DeVos family got wind of that, it swung into action to kill the DEC and indeed it died in the house. DeVos critics are quick to point out that the family to date has pumped about $340,000 into the campaign coffers of the House Republicans and the criticism goes, the family got a return on the investment with this legislation to protect the charters.

The charter community argues parents are the ones who should choose where their kids attend class and the DEC plan ran counter to that choice.

And where is the governor in all this back and forth?

Fixated on fixing the Flint water crisis, he originally called for $715 million for Detroit to eliminate the deficit including $515 million for the debt and another $200 million to run the district.

House Republicans chopped their governor’s suggestions allocating $500 million and $33 million instead and adding all this other stuff that the governor never requested.

He also wanted the DEC but got a goose egg there, too.

The Detroit mayor has been up to his eyeballs in lobbying this issue including breaking bread with GOP lawmakers hours before they scuttled his ideas for their own.

The chair of the House budget committee had some advice for the mayor, “I hope he continues to run the City of Detroit and leave the schools alone.”

Fat chance of that.