New York ? For Angel Santiago, the easiest school lessons always were drowned out by tears and the taunts of classmates who snubbed the lonesome little boy for being too girly.

Santiago would look in the mirror and agonize over what was missing — a female body. He couldn’t concentrate on homework. He feigned countless ailments so his mom or grandmother would keep him home from school and away from the boys who would chase him and yell “fag.” In seventh grade, he ended up in a psychiatric hospital after overdosing on antidepressants.

Santiago’s life changed the day he walked into the Harvey Milk School, a 50-student high school in New York City’s Greenwich Village run by a nonprofit agency serving gay and lesbian youths.

New York is making history — and controversy — this year by turning the school into an official public high school. The newly renovated school will open today with 100 students as the nation’s first public high school for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth.

“Harvey Milk gave me the strength I needed to focus on my school work,” said Santiago, 17, who graduated a year early this summer with a B average and now attends Manhattan Community College.

The Board of Education’s decision to expand Harvey Milk and convert the privately run “alternative program” into an official public high school has been hammered by conservatives and liberals.

“This is not an issue about whether someone agrees with a particular lifestyle. The issue is that there are young people in New York who are finding themselves in dangerous situations, and they have a right to be protected,” said Ninfa Segarra, the former president of the New York City Board of Education who lobbied for and approved the expansion of Harvey Milk, named for a gay San Francisco city supervisor who was murdered in 1978. “This is not an indoctrination center. This is a school.”