We plan to share our experiences with design and implementation of safe spaces for students in online classes. Often the classroom, in-person or virtual, is one of the places where issues of struggling students manifest. The goal of safe spaces in the virtual classroom is to promote student communication, connect them with necessary resources -- academic and non-academic -- to help, and create pathways for them to overcome obstacles. We will distinguish between academic and non-academic safe spaces, discuss the need for academic safe spaces in online classes, and present how such spaces can complement other strategies to support student success. We will present strategies to implement and compare the advantages of different approaches and share examples of safe spaces implemented along with student responses who utilized them. Academic safe spaces can help nontraditional students navigate the constraints of time and academic resources and ultimately aid in improved retention rates.