197. School commissioners and trustees shall make text-books available free of charge to all children attending the schools under their control.
The textbooks remain the property of the school board. The school commissioners and trustees may make regulations respecting the choice, use, supervision and preservation of works, manuals, textbooks and teaching materials. Each child shall take reasonable care of them and return them at the end of the school year, failing which the school board may claim the cost thereof.
For the purposes of this section, exercise books or exercise text-books in which the children write or draw shall not be considered as text-books.
R. S. 1964, c. 235, s. 208; 1979, c. 80, s. 23.