/diy/ - Do It Yourself

For the boards, can you just print them? Ideally if your school has an A3 printer, or just paste together 2 A4 sheets then reprint them whenever they get too dog-eared and dirty.

For the pieces, can you get access to a 3D printer? If you contact your local hackerspace I'm guessing they might be willing to make you a few sets to prove they can, or out of simple good will. Weighting the bases is still a good idea - the tactile sensation of the pieces is surprisingly important to Chess-players.

Finally, and perhaps not entirely appropriately for school children, Toohey's Old (an Australian beer) are currently printing chess boards on their cartons, and pieces on the underside of the bottle caps. Buy a few boxes and you'll get beer and chess, it's win - win!